Third Time Lucky
by Bastille Kain
Summary: Drusilla dies in Prague. Doyle has vision of Spike killing himself and what happens to the world afterwards. Finds Spike and lures him back to LA with the promise of fighting the strongest slayer of all time if he really wants to die.
1. Chap 1: Don't Close Your Eyes

Author: Bastille Kain

Title: Third Time Lucky

Disclaimer: The character's of Buffy, Angel, and any other show that happen to be used here belong to other people.

Setting: Begins before first season with Buffy still living in LA.

Summary: Drusilla dies in Prague. Doyle has vision of Spike killing himself and what happens to the world afterwards. Finds Spike and lures him back to LA with the promise of fighting the strongest slayer of all time if he really wants to die.

Pairings: B/S

Rating: PG-13

Feedback: Is always appreciated. Just try to keep it constructive.

Email: Kain6639yahoo com

Archive: If you like it that much, sure. Just be sure to let me know where it's going, and give me the credit, good or bad, for my work.

Musical Note: "Third Time Lucky" is performed by FogHat. "Don't Close Your Eyes" is performed by Kixx. Lyrics can be found at sing365 com

Author's Note: Finally got chapter one of "Third TIme Lucky"re-edited after losing all the changes I had just finished making. It was slow going since I was also retypingthe dozen pages I lost on "Minutes to Memories" along with chapter four of "Third Time Lucky". Chapter two and three haven't been been redited yet, but I did take out the song lyrics. Should get to them along with chapter four over the next week. I hope you enjoy the changes to chapter one, hopefully I've made it a better read, if not let me know. Next weekend you should get the rest of the story.

Bastille Kain

* * *

Chapter One: Don't Close Your Eyes

Spike couldn't believe it was over. Four years shy of six score, a hundred and sixteen wonderfully majestic years of cutting a bloody swath of death over five continents. They had never bothered with Australia, it took too long to get there and there was never anything to do once you arrived. Antarctica might be dark six months running, but unless you were into penguin or walrus there wasn't a thing to eat on the overgrown ice cube.

In that time he had killed himself two slayers, the first in China during the Boxer Rebellion and the other on a subway car in New York City. Before any of that he had accomplished his greatest feat, he foiled Darla's plan to have Angelus desouled. The last thing he ever wanted was to have that ponce around mucking up the works again.

None of it mattered now. In the end none of it mattered at all.

He could still hear her, screaming for him as the mob had ripped her away from him, pleading with him to save her from them, to rend the mob limb from limb. He had tried, thrown everything he had into killing the humans that dared to lay their hands on his Dark Princess.

He had almost succeeded.

Almost.

The worst sound he had ever heard, in his century plus years on this planet, was her cry ending abruptly. He could still hear it in his head. The suddenness with which it ended, the finality of her cry as it was cut off.

He had failed her.

Drusilla.

She had given him everything and he couldn't even save her from a wretched band of humans.

It wouldn't matter. A few more minutes and he would never hear her scream again.

A few more minutes and he would be with her forever.

"A rather pitiful way to go out," a loose Irish accent said from behind him. "Specially for the scourge of Europe. Well one of them anyway."

Spike could pick up the odor of cheap whiskey even before he turned around to face the shabbily dressed man. His first instinct was to go over and just rip his head off, but that would take him further away from the sun. Something Spike didn't want to do at the moment, so instead he simply asked the Irishman, "What the bloody hell would you know about it?" As he spoke he realized the cheap whisky he smelt might be coming from him.

The man seamed to smirk as he took his hands out of his pockets. "Spike, William the bloody. Scourge of Europe, and oh yeah. The slayer of slayers is going to go out and get himself a suntan. It hardly seems fitting. Always figured you'd want something a bit more challenging?"

"Like what?" Spike asked unable to contain his curiosity.

"Like the strongest slayer in history being called," Doyle answered indifferently.

Spike snorted as he said, "Already killed myself two slayers. Wasn't nothing challenging about it."

"But they weren't like this one," Doyle told him. "Nothing like her at all."

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

The smoke billowed up around Spike's head as he stood at the edge of the shadow the large oak tree was generous enough to provide.

Doyle watched the vampire with unease. The Powers That Be had sent him a vision of Spike turning to dust in the morning sun, then another of him and the girl the two of them were here waiting for. Fighting with each other, and then, fighting with each other, only together instead of against.

He didn't know how he knew the things he knew. He figured the Powers simply shoved the information into his head along with the visions. It would explain the extraordinary, mule size hangover he felt kicking away inside his skull after he had pulled himself up off the floor. Those little drummers had been getting paid triple time if the thunderous pounding was anything to go on.

Keeping the vampire alive during their trip to Los Angeles had been a feat of Herculean proportions on his part. Every time he left the vampire alone, even for the barest fraction of a second, by the time he returned Spike would be on the verge of starting a brawl, with whoever happened to be nearby. He had never thought he would see nuns so riled up, but then again he never figured Spike would start a theological debate with them. At least that time Spike hadn't been looking to spill somebody's blood, he petulant brat.

For the most part the vampire didn't care who he fought with. So long as they were big and there were lots of them Spike contented himself with having what he called, a right royal row. When that happened Doyle normally found himself in the middle of a scrap he didn't want to be in.

When there wasn't a fight to keep Spike preoccupied he would flirt with the sun like he was doing now. One good breeze and it would be bye, bye vampire and a few years later it would be bye, bye world.

"You sure you want to be doing that?" Doyle inquired cautiously.

"You like your head sitting pretty as you please on top of your shoulders?" Spike responded with nothing like caution.

"Hey, your funeral," Doyle answered.

"That's right mate," Spike replied as his eyes scanned the throng of teenagers erupting through the exterior doors. "So what does this here slayer look like?"

"A girl," Doyle began. Before he could continue though, Spike turned his head to glare at man. "Ain't gonna find her looking at me," he said lightly to Spike. The bleach blonde vampire scowled at him for a moment before turning his gaze back to the school. His blue eyes instantly lock on a short, bubbly, blonde cheerleader as she bounced along with a flock of like minded geese in close formation behind her. "Let's see, she's about five three, blonde hair..."

Spike pointed directly at her as he proclaimed, "That's her." As his arm sat in the sunlight it began to smoke.

"Jesus," Doyle cursed as he moved forward forcing Spike's arm back down.

With a light shrug Spike easily brushed Doyle off of him. The half breed regained his balance easily and matched Spike's glare with one of his own. Several tense moments passed before he finally said, "Yeah. That's her," before he turned on his heel and strode resolutely away from the vampire. His job was done. Let Spike kill himself for all he cared.

As Doyle walked away Spike turned his attention back to the soon to be slayer as she laughed and exchanged glib banter with her friends. A vicious smirk creased his lips. She didn't look like much but she was going to be the strongest. Strong enough to do him in.

Maybe?

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Spike spent the next week returning to his tree. The ground was littered with the spent cigarette butts that measured his growing impatience. His one deficient personality trait, and this past week was stretching the little patience he did have to their limits.

Yesterday he thought he felt something different about the peppy blonde but he needed to be sure before he went off and attacked her for no good reason. Being sure meant waiting for her watcher to make his appearance. And unless he was mistaken the fat porker wearing the bad tweed suit was precisely that.

"Buffy Summers?" The watcher asked.

The tiny blonde looked up at him with a curious little smile. "Yeah. Hi! What?" By the time she finished the curiosity was gone and had been replaced with a tint of confusion sparkling in her eyes.

"I need to speak with you," he said in a stuffy, too serious tone of voice. As if the fate of the world hinged on his next few words.

Buffy's attitude became a little defensive, but Spike noted a touch of repressed challenge in her body language. "You're not from Bullock's, are you? Cause I… I meant to pay for that lipstick."

"There isn't much time. You must come with me. Your destiny awaits," he told her in that same voice. The direst of consequences were waiting just around the corner if you don't do exactly as I say. Spike was tired of hearing his voice already.

"I don't have a destiny," she replied with a curt little nod. "I'm destiny-free, really," she adds after a beat.

"Yes. You have," He began in that some tone of voice. Spike knew if he was to forced to listen to it for much longer he would rip the man's throat out. "You are the Chosen One. You alone can stop them."

Her curiosity was peaked again. She couldn't help but ask, "Who?"

"The vampires," he answered. If possible his voice became even more ominous, and even more self important all at the same time.

"Huh?"

Spike smirked to himself as he listened in to their conversation. "Slayer's got herself a bit of a larcenous streak has she?" He murmured with a small chuckle finding the thought of the tiny blonde shoplifting rather amusing.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

"She missed," Spike growled in a low voice as he watched the slayer fight, scampering away was more what it looked to him. She kicked out at the fledgling giving herself a small crease of space. "Strongest slayer ever my bloody ass." He whirled away from the fight in a murderous huff.

He had followed the slayer, and the bloated warthog that called himself her watcher, to this cemetery hoping to catch a glimpse of the slayer in action as she tore some unlucky fledgling to pieces. He had gotten his wish, in a way. He had seen the slayer fight, if one could call what he saw a fight. She had no skill, no power. The girl had the cunning, the ferocity of a caged gerbil.

His powerful legs easily carried him into the murky darkness of the local woods in a half dozen strides. His black duster flared around him with each step he took. That girl would be lucky if she survived a week. It had been the most miserable excuse of a fight that he had seen in ages. Even Angel would be able to rip this girl apart.

He had a serious inkling to find himself a certain half breed demon and rip his bloody head off.

It had been ten days since Drusilla had died.

It was ten days too many that he had been hearing her cries in his head.

Now he was planning on sharing his pain with the person responsible for extending it.

Doyle.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Doyle glanced up briefly at the blonde vampire looming over his table. "Been expecting you," he lied easily as he raised his glass in salute and asked, "care to join me?"

Spike flopped down into the chair across from the half breed; his face was grim as he said, "The dead man buying his executioner a drink. Seems right proper if you ask me."

"Executioner," Doyle sputtered quite surprised by the statement. "What's this all about?"

Spike wasted no time launching into his complaint. "You said she was going to be the strongest slayer ever," Spike replied in a very distinctive voice that let Doyle know he was on very thin ice, and it had begun to crack under his weight even as the Irish man poured him a shot from the bottle that had been sitting on the table. He did an impressive job of keeping the fear out of his voice. "She couldn't beat my aged grandmother."

"Don't you mean grandfather?" Doyle corrected with a slight laugh.

Spike's glare could flay flesh as easily as his hands could snap bones. It had the desired effect as it cut the mirth out of Doyle's voice. "Point is I've fought two slayers in the last century…"

"Right," Doyle cut in. "A pair of trained, seasoned slayers." He hoped the vampire believed his line of reasoning. "What, did you think they come all prepackaged that way?" Spike drained the shot of whiskey and slammed the glass back down on the table. "They take time to grow into their power just like vampires. Only they find theirs faster or die quicker. One girl, alone. Fighting all the forces of evil," he muttered with heat as he refilled both shot glasses. "Got to be a hell of a way to go," he finished as he raised his shot glass.

Spike picked his up slowly, unsure of what he should do. It had been simple when he thought of the slayer as the slayer instead of the girl she was.

With a low growl he downs the shot then fills it back up. It didn't matter what she had been. She was the slayer now. Downing the shot a dark light glimmers within his blue eyes.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Spike glided silently up the street behind the slayer, his heavy Doc Martin boots didn't make the slightest scrape of a sound despite his heavy footsteps. He had been following her all night, and while she showed some sign of improvement, especially considering the night before, it would be months, maybe years, before she was ready to face him.

He didn't want to wait years. He couldn't wait years.

There had to be some way to accelerate whatever process slayers used to gain their strength.

As he skulked along behind her he began to hear shouting, a couple of parents yelling at each other. Normally he wouldn't pay any attention to the disturbance except it came from the direction he was going which forced him to listen. Occasionally he caught snippets of the conversation, pieces he couldn't tune out. Phrases like rebellious daughter, grades slipping, and fighting.

He smirked indulgently at what sounded like a girl after his own heart. That was until he saw the slayer slip over the low hedge wall and slink up to the back window of the house the yelling emanated form.

There was something about the slump of her shoulders he found appalling. His slayer radiated a sense of defeat. If this was what she had to listen to at home it came as no surprise to him that she was having such a hard time at night. He didn't know of anyone who wouldn't be adversely affected hearing a constant barrage of disparaging remarks about their shortcomings. If he had to listen to the litany much longer Spike knew he would do something impulsive, and possibly irrevocable.

Once she made her way inside he leapt the wall with ease and strode up to the house unconcerned if anyone was watching him. The yelling began to grate on his nerve as he watched the young slayer pull off her bulky coat before heading into her bathroom.

Turning the light on Buffy went to the large sink. She gave the knob a slight twist to get the water flowing water and began scrubbing at the coat trying to get the stains out. The tiny blonde spent nearly five minutes furiously scrubbing at the coat. The entire time couldn't help but hear her parents less then stellar opinion of her.

Before she hung her head and started crying softly he wanted to point out, in excruciatingly painful detail, just what twits they were. Their daughter was going out night after night killing off monsters like him. Instead of bitching about her perceived faults they ought to be praising her for the hero she was.

Once the tears began flowing he wanted to string the pair of them up by their intestines. They didn't deserve to have a daughter like her.

With the suddenness of a lightening strike his thoughts stopped.

_What the bloody hell_? _You've gone and flipped your bleeding gourd_. _She's the sodden slayer_. _You're the vampire_. _Wench's suppose to do you good and proper when the times right_.

Her pain should have brought him nothing but pleasure. It shouldn't be filling him with this desire to hold her and wipe away her tears as he comforted her with soothing words that everything was going to be all right.

If he was any sort of decent vampire, like Angelus, he would be using this moment to plot her destruction, possibly by worming his way deep into her heart so that she would fall in love with him while he systematically took away all her other support structures until he was her only means of comfort left. He shouldn't be wondering what it would be like to hold her supple body in his strong arms as he soothed away all her worries and she slowly fell asleep feeling safe and secured and snuggled tight against him, as he guarded her dreams making sure she remained undisturbed.

With a harsh snarl on his lips Spike spun away from the house. His blood felt like it was blistering. He had the distinct feeling that somebody was playing with him, twisting him about for their own amusement. If anybody knew who that might be it would be his least favorite half breed. Once he peeled the truth out of Doyle he would pay his master a little visit. He hoped Doyle was a stand up kind of guy just so he could make sure he never stood up again.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

After his failure to locate Doyle, a task he spent several days on before discovering the half breed had fled Los Angeles for more a more agreeable climate – someplace with lots of sun all year round – Spike began to learn as much as he could about this slayer. He followed her everywhere she went; it was an activity that had become a full time occupation for him. One he was fast beginning to despise. Watching her life fall to pieces around her did not make for a pleasurable evening.

Her friends were on the cusp of abandoning her, leaving her high and dry. With her as the axis around which their arguments spun Joyce and Hank Summers turned their collapsing marriage into a macabre sort of extreme sport. The watcher was constantly telling that she was going to die if she didn't do better and train harder.

For a couple days he toyed with the idea of slaughtering the entire lot just so she wouldn't have to deal with their petty, demeaning, and paltry attitudes anymore. He hadn't followed through on the initial conception. The thought of doing the slayer a favor didn't sit too well with him.

He held onto the idea though. Once they fought, and if he killed her, then he would kill them. The thought of them being alive while she fed the worms was wrong. None of them deserved to live if she was dead.

The only aspect of her life that wasn't being flushed down a crapper at near light speed was her relationship with her little sister. Though the Little Bit was using her new found knowledge of her sister's calling to blackmail the slayer, getting small things only a ten year old girl could want. Spike actual found the girl's antics almost precocious. For a few hours each night she allowed the slayer to forget about her sacred duty and just be the girl she had always been before.

Spike enjoyed his life a lot more back before he learnt what happened to a slayer after they were called, or chosen, or whatever it was that made them special, turned them into feared killing machines the world over. Back then it had been simple. Slayer. Vampire. Vampire kills slayer. It was easy to remember. He liked it a lot. Now he found himself wondering about things like; if she was eating properly, getting enough sleep, keeping up with her studies. It was so domestic.

The entire time he could feel his pain over Drusilla's loss lessening, fading, slipping away from him as if it was nothing more then a dream.

He hated himself for it. Hated the slayer more for doing it to him, for taking away what had been, was still special to him. With everything second that passed he felt his anger grow; at him, at her, anything and everything.

At the same time he couldn't help but be drawn to her. There was such a vibrancy about her, a feel of boundless energy. He could see it in how she fought, how she lived. Even after a day of taking heaps of abuse from every side she still picked herself up off the floor or ground as the case may be, and goes again.

Despite what her watcher continually told her, she was getting better. He saw the improvement each and every night as she roamed the cemeteries. She never tried to overwhelm the vampires being more content to outwit them and use their own, overly aggressive natures against them.

Tonight was much the same as each of the previous four nights. Walk around the outskirts of Los Angeles and stake vampires. Since she had been called Spike had noticed a mark increase in the vampire activity in the area.

Spike came to a stop. He could smell an entire gang of vampires closing in on the area, the smell of a freshly opened grave. It wasn't actually a smell, more like a feeling, a sense of something kindred. That he had a sense of it meant there must be half a dozen or more. That many vampires working together meant either a pact, something almost unheard of, or one of the old masters was raising an army.

He moved quickly, to the few humans on the street it was like a blur had brushed past them. They were able to make out a vague image of something, but that was it. He caught up with the slayer just as seven vampires converged on her. He can smell her fear peak as she took in her situation. Spike listened to the hit squad as they bantered and blustered with a deaf ear. They were trying to puff themselves up with self important talk, all of which meant nothing.

The fight started off with a flurry of fast paced, high energy moves that accomplished next to nothing. After the initial rush of activity it proceeded more or less how he expected it to. The vampires held a decided advantage, but the slayer was doing a decent job of fending them off. She even managed to stake two of them in the process.

It didn't take long for them to begin swarming over her though, not at seven, then six, and finally five to one odds. She was moving, keeping them from being able to pin her down, or hem her in. It was simply a stalling tactic and everyone involved knew it.

It was very easy for Spike to see how this was going to end. It was an outcome that wasn't going to get him his epic battle with her, the one where either she killed him or he killed her.

Clapping loudly Spike stepped out of the shadows. His sudden and unexpected presence brought the fight to a grinding halt. "Well, well, well," he said making a show of taking in the scene, "what do my eyes perceive? Five starving wolves pulling down Little Red Riding Hood on her way to grandmother's house."

Buffy snapped her mouth close as she watched the overly cocky Englishman as he sauntered out of the woods. The increase in her heart's racing tempo had little to do with the fight she had just been in and everything to do with the dangerously delectable bleach blonde hottie. His voice was doing things to her stomach she had never felt before, as an illicit chill coursed down her spine. He plucked a cigarette out of his pack and popped it into his mouth, flipped open his silver zippo and lit the end without a care in the world.

Her mouth went dry as she instantly memorized every detail of his body, his attitude, his countenance. Everything about him was being meticulously catalogued and filed away inside her mind. From his platinum blonde hair to his untied Doc Martins, the check mark scar over his eyebrow, to his electric blue eyes, his high, arched cheekbones. The way his black duster hung from his shoulders, moving as he moved like it was a living part of him. The black t-shirt that framed his exquisite torso, with it doing more to accentuate the sculpted muscles it was attempting to cover then to actually hide them.

Coming back to herself with a start Buffy suddenly regained the ability to speech, to string one word after another in order to articulate an idea with semi intelligent sentences. Plus she could now feel the watery drool leaking from the corner of her mouth. As unobtrusively as possible she quickly wiped her mouth clean.

"You need get out of here," Buffy warned hoping she would be able to buy the stranger a chance to get away. All she had to do was keep the attention five vampires focused on her while he did the smart thing and ran away as fast as he could. _Right_, _no problem there Buffy_!

"Isn't that sweet," Spike mocked. "Slayer's worried about me. I think I might actually shed a tear," he added with a slight squint. "Nope, sorry. Just a bit of smoke in my eye."

"Who the hell are you?" The largest member of the well dressed group of vampires demanded. He was under strict orders to bring the slayer to Lathos. He wanted the slayer and what Lathos wanted, Cirrus got. His black hair was cropped short just like all the vampires in his little troupe. Their suits, from tie clips to cufflinks and hushpuppies loafers, weren't top of the line, but none of it looked as if it had been stripped from a dead wino not more then an hour past either.

Spike took him to be the leader of this rag tag band of miscreants. They gave the impression of businessmen out on a corporate raid. "Spike," he finally said and then waited for their reactions.

There was an awed silence that fell over the five vampires. Lathos had made sure all of his minions knew the name of every vampire that had taken the life of a slayer and still unlived. Spike was one among a bare handful. Unlike the others he was an oddity among their kind in that he fought them alone, in single combat.

"Our master has already claimed this slayer for his own," Carver, a large brunette snarled. He was big having more then four inches and close to thirty pounds on Spike. He was still three inches shy of being able to look Cirrus in the eyes. The fellow had the bad luck to remind Spike of Drusilla's sire Angelus. "You can wait for the next..."

Spike grabbed hold of his throat, squeezing hard enough to cut his warning short. His fingers dug into his flesh causing small rivulets of blood to flow down his neck as he forced the larger vampire to his knees. "Why don't you go back, tell whatever blighter you call master, that the slayer's mine. The only bloke that's going to be sinking his fangs into her is me. Any of his gits comes within spitting distance of her is gonna be sent back to him one bloody piece at a time, unless he wants to step up and challenge me for the right, and I don't think he has balls big enough to do that."

Buffy's face fell as she began to catch up on parts of the conversation taking place around her. Mostly it was the parts where Spike's incredibly sexy English accent filled the air. When it didn't she nearly lost herself drinking in his amazingly hot body. "You're a vampire," she whispered in stunned amazement.

"Second thought," Spike said rethinking everything he had just said as he tossed his cigarette away. He ignored Carvers two hands desperately trying to dislodge his fingers from around his throat. "That there might be a bit much for you to remember. Don't want you to overtax those limited resources you're working with." He continued squeezing, fingers buried knuckle deep in his flesh. With a sudden surge of strength Spike separated his head from his shoulders. With a horrified look on his face Carver turned to dust that the whispering breeze carried off. "I'll tell him myself."

"That was so cool," Buffy gushed with bright eyes. Then disappointment creased her face and tinted her voice as she murmured, "How come I can't do that?"

For a moment the four remaining vampires look on in stunned silence. Then like a damn bursting Cirrus shouted, "Kill him!" A split second later they charged Spike.

Buffy watched as the blonde vampire blocked, slipped, punched, dodged, kicked, tossed, avoided, and countered their attacks with contemptuous ease. Each movement caused his duster to whirl and flare around him like a majestic cloak. He hurled the first one, stunned, to the ground almost at her feet. Not wanting to waste the opportunity she quickly staked him where he laid.

Spike snapped the second one's neck dropping him to the ground. A large smile was plastered to his face as he lost himself in the rhythm of the fight. This was what he should have been doing after laying waste to the mob that had killed Drusilla. Gone out and found anything that could challenge him.

He ducked under a punch from the leader; his foot sent him crashing to the ground.

Instead he allowed himself to get caught up in the slayer's life, allowing her pain to become his. It was a bloody travesty as far as he was concerned.

He was a dark warrior. The scourge of Europe.

He had cut a swath of death and destruction over five continents.

Now he was reduced to this. The slayer's sodding body guard. Her knight in black leather duster.

The fourth vampire, one only slightly taller and broader through the shoulders then Spike, grabbed Spike in a strong bear hug lifting him off the ground. Spike slammed his head backward smashing the other vampire in the face with the back of his skull. As his feet hit the ground he spun around and backhanded the vampire.

He stumbled backward, then stopped a look utter bewilderment on his face for a brief instant before he turned to dust that floated to the ground revealing the tiny blonde slayer holding a stake with a large, ear to ear grin splitting her face and pure adornment shinning in her eyes.

Spike looked around frantically for any of the other vampires he had been fighting. Only there was nothing but dust covering the ground. His eyes went wide as he whirled on her. "What the bleeding hell do you think you're doing you twit!" He roared at her, more from exasperation then any real anger.

Buffy's face was a heartbeat away from falling before she decided to ignore his enraged outburst and simply answered him by saying, "We make a pretty good team, huh?"

If possible his eyes got even wider as he wondered what had happened to her brain, or if she had heard anything that he had said just a few minutes ago. "No!" He raged at her as he swept his arms out wide while glaring at her with heated eyes. "No, we don't make a sodding good team. We ain't no bloody Jan and Dean, We sure as all rot ain't Sonny and his strumpet Cher, and we sure as hell ain't no Bonnie and Clyde. You're the slayer. I'm the vampire. We fight, I kill you. Drain you dry and chop your body up into sausage to feed to my dogs. Not that I have any dogs, but I'll sure as all bloody hell go out and get a few mongrels just so I can feed your disemboweled corpse to them."

Buffy stared at him with wide nearly tear filled eyes as she said, "But you saved me," in a tiny voice.

Spike shook his head unable to believe her. "Didn't you hear a single word I said you simple minded wretch. You," he began with a hard jab of his finger at her, "are mine to kill. No ponce bugger who sends his band of poofter boys out to collect you is going to get to sink his fangs into you."

"Fine," Buffy hissed softly. "You want a shot at me? Come on. I'm not afraid of you. I've taken out vampires twice your size, maybe three times." It was true. She wasn't afraid of him, not very much anyway. If anything she found the thought of fighting Spike to be thrilling.

Spike leaned in close, a knowing smirk spreading across his lips. "You ain't ready for me yet," he informed her trying to sound threatening only his words come out husky. "Don't worry. When you are," his grin broadened as he leaned further in. "I'll be there," he warned with an intense glare.

A moment later he spun away, his coat whirling around him once again. He stalked through the graveyard with powerful strides. As he passed a large headstone his fist lashes out pulverizing the marker, turning it to large chunks of broken marble.

Buffy watched him go with something halfway between a frown and a smile playing with the corners of her mouth. She knew Spike was going to be watching her. The thought both frightened her and thrilled her to the very core of her being. For some reason she wasn't worried about him killing her.


	2. Chap 2: Midnight Blue

Chapter Two: Midnight Blue

**I felt like I was falling, drowning in the most electric baby blue eyes I've ever seen. They were so expressive, filled with so much pain, a deep abiding sadness so profound that I can't even begin to describe what he is feeling, let alone understand. For some reason that I can't explain, I feel as if he understands what I'm going through. What it means to be alone.**

Dawn sighed morosely as she flipped the stiff page in Buffy's slayer diary. Until last night there had always been detailed accounts of her fights. Last night was different. It frightened the young girl, more then she would ever willingly admit, that her sister went out every night and fought vampires in order to make the world safe for everyone, it also made her prouder then anything. Her sister was chosen to protect the world and Buffy took her charge seriously and hadn't tried to shirk her responsibility.

Someday she hoped that she too could be a slayer and fight at her big sister's side. She could help Buffy save the world. For Dawn that would be the greatest thing that could possibly happen. The two of them side by side, together. They would make the greatest superhero duo ever, way better then Bat Man and Robin.

All Buffy had written about in her diary last night was this hunky – her word – stranger whose hair was dyed a platinum blonde that she had run into during her patrol. Two full pages she had trudged her way through reading about how his black, one size too small, tee shirt molded itself perfectly to his sculpted abs. That was followed by a page and a half on how his black duster swayed and swirled and whirled majestically with his slightest or most grandiose gesture. There was another page, describing in full detail, his high arching cheeks, how his right cheek had a twitch to it when he was angry. He had three quarters of a page detailing a small check mark scar over his left eyebrow.

In the immortal words of her mother, Buffy had it bad for whoever this mystery guy was. All total there was over five pages describing him in painstakingly flowery detail. Dawn thought she would be able to recognize him from her sister's writings alone. All she had to do was look for someone who sort of resembled James Dean, but with platinum blond hair, and wore a suit of shinny armor and a black duster.

At the bottom of the page her sharp blue eyes picked out what she had been looking for all night. The fight. There were only five lines.

**Seven vampires attacked me last night, managed to stake two of them on my own. That was when Spike showed up and completely trashed the rest of them. I went around dusting them while they were down. Spike was wickedly angry at me for that, but I'm sure he was just worried about my safety and was totally exaggerating what he plans on doing to me.**

**Oh, yeah. Almost forgot, he's a vampire.**

Dawn blinked at that.

She had to have read that last part wrong. There was no way Buffy could have written what she just read. It was impossible, it couldn't be true. Buffy couldn't have it bad for a vampire. That was just wrong.

The thoughts ran through her head as she went over the last paragraph again. And then another time just to make sure she had read it right the first two.

A vampire had saved her sister. Why would a vampire save Buffy? Unless maybe there were such things as good vampires who were trying to stop there evil counterparts? Or maybe he was in love with Buffy like she was with him?

Dawn's face brightened considerably at those last thoughts. It would so be like her sister to fall for somebody she shouldn't, and worse, have the guy fall for her. That was the type of plot thread the authors of those sad, sappy, trashy, cheap, and cheesy romance novels their mother enjoyed reading so much would use as the main and extremely tragic theme.

Mortal enemies that were destined soulmates… or some other nonsense like it.

All this juicy material and she had basically wasted an entire night of snooping because she couldn't say a word or Buffy would no she had violated their agreement. If she did then she'd have to give all the money back that Buffy had been so generously loaning her since she found out about Buffy being the slayer. Worst of all though it meant there would be no teasing her about her crush over the breakfast table in the morning.

Sighing softly she sat up carefully closing Buffy's diary. The lock clicked loudly in the subdued quiet of Buffy's room. Standing up she smoothed down the blankets carefully erasing any evidence that she had been there. Then she pulled open the drawer to the bedside nightstand and slipped the diary back under several books Buffy had yet to open much less read. Taking one last look around her sister's room, just to make sure she had left nothing out of place.

Since becoming the slayer Buffy had become a lot more perceptive when it came to such things. It was how she had discovered Dawn had read her first slayer entry and exacted her promise not to tell mom and dad, not that she was going to tell them anyway, but she couldn't let Buffy know that. It also meant she had to become a lot more ingenious and cunning in her late night ransacking of Buffy's room. With that she turned on her heel and silently existed Buffy's room.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Buffy's scanned the darkness, searching for the creatures that prowled the night. Demons, vampires, anything that fed on those that couldn't defend themselves. It was her job, her duty to protect the humans of this city, of the entire planet. To kill the vampires, to make the night safe for those that have legitimate, or not so legitimate, business to conduct after dark.

She was nearing the end of her patrol. Another fifteen minutes or so and she'd be back home. It had been a rather slow night even if she had dusted close to a dozen vampires, all in ones and twos, no large packs tonight trying to run her into the ground thankfully.

Tonight she was doing it with just a bit more zeal then most nights. The reason why? There had been no Spike sighting all night. It wasn't really a bad thing, but it wasn't good either. It had her feeling out of sorts. Like a free diver who had stayed down half a minute too long and was straining to reach the surface and gasp that much needed breathe of fresh oxygen. It was like that, but more so and less all at the same time.

She still couldn't believe half the things she had written in her diary last night. Rereading the nearly half dozen pages she had been sorely tempted to rip them all of out and toss them in the trash...

Only that would leave them in the open for Dawn to find. The last thing she wanted was for her sister to be reading that she had a major crush on possibly the hottest guy she has ever seen. She could hardly believe she had forgotten that, and had to go back later and write it in.

_Only he's not a guy at all_… _Well_, _technically he's a guy_. Her more then traitorous thoughts happily reminded her in no uncertain terms. _He's also a vampire remember_, the more rational side of her brain put in. Then added for good measure, _One of those things we're suppose to kill_… _But he saved our life_. _And then told us he only saved us because he wanted to kill us himself once we're strong enough to give him a good fight_.

Judging by how easily he tore through four vamps Buffy doubted very much that she was ever going to be a match for him. One fledgling gave her enough of a problem. Trying to take two at a time felt like base jumping and not being the person that packed the parachute, you simply didn't know whether there was a parachute in there or not until it actually opened. Trickery was about the only reason she had survived so long. Being the better fighter had very little, nearly nothing, to do with her continued survival.

She was at least happy that Dawn hadn't found her new hiding place. That would just be majorly weird if her little sister had read last night's entry. Ten bucks would seem like a bargain when compared to the amount of money she would be able to exhort after finding out about her nearly head over heels infatuation with Spike.

He was a vampire. That was all that mattered.

Even he had said so last night. Eventually he was going to come for her. Try to kill her. He was just waiting for her to get stronger, whatever that meant, before fighting her.

Nothing was ever going to happen between them. They would fight. One would kill the other and that would be the end of it.

She knew that. It was why she had been especially brutal on the vampires she fought earlier tonight. She couldn't help the fact that despite it all she still wanted to see Spike. Just because they had to fight each other one day didn't mean they couldn't hang out, patrol, kill demons together. Maybe take in a movie.

A small grin spread over her lips as she imagined what type of movies Spike would possibly have an interest in. _Some blood and guts horror movie_? He was a guy as well as being a vampire so she figured that would be the most likely combination for him.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Buffy ducked under the wild haymaker thrown by the too large vampire. Her right leg snapped upward behind her back, the sole of her foot smashing him square in the face. He staggered back a step, his eyes crossing for a moment before he gave his head a hard shake to clear the cobwebs out before lunging forward. She sidestepped to the left kicking out, her foot catching him square in the stomach upending him.

"Oh, come on," Buffy griped jauntily. "I know chess club members with more stamina," she informed him as he scrambled to his feet.

Something hard and heavy slammed into her back sending her sprawling head long to the pavement. Quickly rolling over she felt surge of fear pulse through her as she stared up at the three inhuman faces hovering over her. One of them, a tiny redhead, was holding a long, thick steel pipe in his hands.

Scrambling backward on her hands and feet she fearfully murmured, "You guys don't want to do this," as her eyes darted from side to side searching for anything she could use as a weapon. Her comment caused the three to chuckle humorlessly, but that was fine by her because as long as they were laughing they weren't attacking. _Unless they decide to laugh while they attack_? She thought morosely.

"I'm pretty sure that we do," the redhead responded with a sneer as they advanced on her. "What do you…"

He jerked forward suddenly as a fist burst through his chest holding his heart in a bloody hand. "The chit did warn you," Spike told them. A moment later he crushed the heart of the still stunned vampire he had been holding in his hand.

Buffy smiled adoringly at the bleach blonde vampire who appeared slowly in the swirling dust that slowly settled to the ground. The steel pipe clattered noisily on the pavement. In an instant, which stretched into forever, she emblazoned Spike's image in her mind all over again. Making note of the slightest change in his appearance since the last time she saw him only three nights ago. Like how tonight his black, one size too small, tee shirt wasn't tucked all the way into his pants. As if he had been in a rush to get someplace, which was obviously here so he could help her slay all the evil vampires that were threatening the good people of this fair city.

"You know slayer," Spike began with a slight growl lacing his voice, "if you think you're just gonna lounge about while I clean up your bloody mess for you, you've got another thing coming."

As his words penetrated the fog enshrouding her brain Buffy suddenly realized she was still half lying, half sitting on the ground while one extremely scrumptious hottie, whose intense electric blue eyes roved over her body, as two other vampires cringed away slightly while trying to look like they weren't cringing.

She quickly flipped back to her feet; a mostly fake, indignant scowl had slipped over her features. "I don't need you to clean up my mess. Not that I have a mess that needs to be cleaned, this simply needs to tidied up," she finished with a slight frown that turned into a grimace as she realizes she just made herself sound like Dawn when she was attempting to get out of trouble.

"Hey, if you two have some issues you need to work out we could always come back tomorrow, or maybe even the next day," the smaller of the two remaining vampires suggested politely.

Spike's negligent back fist sent the scrawny vampire away. He crashed into the hard brick wall before dropping to the pavement. He landed in a heap with a soft thud on the blacktop. "There ain't no bloody issues for us to work out," Spike snarled at him. "She's the slayer, I'm a vampire and we're gonna fight to the death," he added looking back at her. _That Doyle bloke swore this here slayer would be the death of me_. "Eventually," he breathed out softly, almost regretfully. The thought that Doyle might have lied or been slightly misleading never entered his mind.

"Why you doing her job then?" The big one asked stupidly.

Spike turned on him. Before he could say anything Buffy delivered a deft roundhouse kick to his head knocking him back a step. "Hey!" She shouted angrily. "Anybody remember me? The chosen one? The girl everyone seems so interested in killing? You know the slayer. Killer of evil undead ever… Well, it's kinda, strictly been L.A. mostly." She pouted savagely. She hated when she lost the thread of her rant whenever she put in a little sidebar. It took her out of her element. Fortunately she was able to pick it up this time without too much difficulty. "I am still standing right here, not like I turned invisible or anything. So, you know it's kinda rude to talk about a person behind their back. Especially when they're standing right in front of you," she finished in a huff.

"You planning on yapping so much he combust all on his own just so he won't have to listen to your meaningless prattle any more?" Spike inquired with snide smirk.

Buffy glared at him while she plucked a stake from her tight waist band. She stepped toward the still dazed looking vampire and plunged it into his heart. "And by the way I do my job just fine," she informed the dust falling to the ground. "Thank you very much."

"That a fact luv?" Spike asked a moment before the steel pipe slapped into his palm, stopping instantly on its path to her head. His fingers wrapped around the cool steel as he circled his arm, along with the pipe in his hand. His movements broke the other vampire's grip on the pipe. Once that happened it suddenly jabbed forward smashing into his forehead knocking him back a stride.

"Please," Buffy sneered haughtily as she spun around plunging the stake through his heart. "Besides," she began with a shrug, "I knew you had him," she finished confidently.

"You knew I had him?" Spike demanded incredulously.

Buffy smiled as her eyes slowly graze over Spike's body. "Of course I knew you had him," she answered smugly. "If you're serious about us fighting to the death that is?"

Spike scowled at her while pulling his cigarettes and lighter from his pocket. Quickly lighting one he shoved the pack and the lighter back into his pocket while he took a rough drag. Plucking the cigarette out of his mouth he said, "Oh you and I are gonna have ourselves a right royal go of it slayer," as he shoved a stiff finger at her.

Her grin widened warming her entire face. A bright light shone in her eyes as Spike stayed standing in front of her, smoke billowing ferociously from his nose. Deciding it was time to take matters into her own hands, literally, Buffy reached out with her tiny hand and lightly latched onto his much larger hand.

Spike flinched at the warmth spreading over his cold palm. He swallowed hard, coughing lightly at the harsh smoke that became lodged in his throat. If his heart could still beat he thought it would have burst by now.

"That sounds really interesting," Buffy was saying as he managed to refocus on her. "Really. And I'd love to hear more about how we're going to fight to the death, but I still got the rest of my patrol to finish, so…" She explains in a very soft voice, a shy smile creasing her lips and an innocent flutter of her eyelashes.

"Oh, yeah. Right," he fumbled for a moment with a light stammer as he gave her hand a firm shake. "I should just shove off then, let you get on with killing all us evil dead things."

Buffy glanced downward, a slight dropping of her eyes as she frowned sadly. "Yeah, I guess you should do that," she said softly with disappointment lacing her voice. Then her face brightened suddenly as a seemingly new thought cropped up in her head. "Or, you could like come with, then you could continue telling me about how we're going to fight to the death. Plus you could like give me pointers on my slaying," she finished enticingly.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Buffy strode down Hemery High School's wide corridors with a light spring in her step as a gaggle of brainless high school beauties trailed along behind her. Their garbled gabbing washed over her as she continued to relive the events of the night before. Her first date with Spike.

_Okay_. _So Spike might not have thought of it as a date_. She could admit that, but what else was she suppose to call it when two people spent a romantic evening strolling all over the city, walking hand in hand, and talking about their lives, their past, their dreams for the future. For the first time in her life she was actually interested in what someone else had to say and hadn't been all that interested in getting a word.

It didn't matter that they spent most of the night talking about her slaying. They talked about how she couldn't stand her watcher, Merrick, pompous windbag who thought he knew everything, asshole that he was. She even told him about how the slaying was ruining the rest of her life; her school and her home. How she could feel it all slipping away from her, how the gulf growing between herself and her friends wasn't really bothering her.

She doesn't know why she opened up to him, not to the degree she had. Normally she wouldn't have said so much, to anyone, but there was just something about him that struck a chord within her. Like he could understand what she was going through.

Then there was Spike giving her pointers while she was in a life and death struggle. So it was more him using that big mouth of his to snap off one witty barb after another. At times they did a better job of distracting her opponents then her tiny fist. It was a thrill to have Spike watching her while she was fought, and after every fight he would show her something different she could have done that would have shortened the fight.

He did an excellent job of explaining things to her, but one time she didn't understand what he was talking about. It probably had more to do with her concentrating on the way his lips were moving then the sounds coming out of them.

She quickly found herself pinned, face first to the wall, his body, one portion of his anatomy in particular, pressing into her. She felt his breath on her bare shoulder as he panted heavily, which now that she was thought about it was kind of odd since vampires don't need to breath.

What he had been going on about still didn't make any sense to her but that had more to do with all the blood surging away from her brain at that moment to relocate in regions just south of her equator. Her own breathes were coming in labored gasps as her heart tried to jump out of her chest.

He pulled away quickly, asking if she understood what he was talking about now. She had sort of nodded numbly at his question. After that though there were a lot of things she no longer understood, even if she had before hand. While he was always quick to demonstrate he was also a bit more reserved with her. Using less force, going slower, and explaining his actions more details then he had before.

She didn't mind, not really. So long as she got to feel his body moving along hers. Weather it was his hand sliding up her arm, his fingers gently caressing her neck, his knee as it slid between her thighs, or his palm as it lightly caresses her breast. None of it mattered to her as her brain continued to lose precious oxygen because of the proximity of his body to hers. The closer he got to her the less oxygen she seemed able to inhale.

The evening finally ended somewhere around two a.m. with Spike walking her home where they bode each other a good night. It had been a longer then usual patrol with more then thirteen encounters. One with five vampires that Spike actually helped her dispatch.

She should have felt exhausted. On nights with only half the action she was normally ready to collapse once she got home.

Instead she had felt vitalize, charged full of this restless energy, so much of it she thought she was going to burst at the seams. With nothing else to do she had pulled out her diary and spent the next two hours writing out the night's events, right down to the tiniest, most insignificant detail.

Twenty pages. She couldn't remember a single time when she had written twenty pages about anything, much less some boy. Then again Spike wasn't just some boy.

He was Spike.

He was her Spike.

"Buffy... Buffy!"

The second, louder, more exasperated calling of her name pulled Buffy out of the slight haze she was in. She really wanted to ignore her friends. Her relationship with them was completely vacuumous, she felt as if they were sucking the life right out of her. "Uh-huh," she mumbled twirling around with a light flounce. "What?"

"You were like spacing right in front of the entire school like one of those spazzy little retreads," Amber flaunted triumphantly. For so long Buffy had been her hero, the girl she idolized more then anyone. The tiny blond had always been ruthless, the most vicious person Amber had ever meant and in only her sophomore year had wrested control of the school away from the entrenched seniors. Nothing happened at Hemery that Buffy didn't condone.

The few weeks though had seen Buffy losing her grip on the school. Events that never would have gotten past her before were slipping by with increasing frequency. People had begun to talk and it wasn't good.

"I so was not," Buffy replied icily. She could dust a hundred vampires a night, with Spike's help, but one word from any of these girls and her life might as well be over. Times like this she truly hates her life. On the plus side if her life was over there was nothing to stop her from turning Amber's face to mush. The thought brought an indulgent quirk to the corner of Buffy's lips.

Amber wondered why Buffy had suddenly smiled. She couldn't be so blind that she didn't see the writing on the wall. A touch of doubt, fear really, knotted itself in her gut. Amber wished she could back out right now, she knew Buffy, knew Buffy wouldn't be smiling at her right now if she didn't have something, only it was to late now. If she folded now the others would tear her apart, leave her carcass as a warning to everyone else. Metaphorically speaking. And the worst part of it was Buffy would be the one leading them. Pushing her rebellious emotions aside she challenged Buffy in a deadly voice. "Right? That's why you didn't hear me calling your name for the last two halls?"

"I don't know what your deals been lately," Tiffany began in a hard voice. Beside Amber she had been loudest voice at their meeting. There was an even worse fate in store for her if Buffy wasn't toppled right now. "But you're starting to pull the rest of us down with and we just can't have that."

"We've all been talking about it… Took a vote and everything, and well… It's sort of…"

"You're out Buffy," Amber said with fake sympathy. It was done. If Buffy had something on them, they would find soon enough. Buffy wouldn't wait all that long before striking back, which meant they would have to strike first. Turn the entire school against her. It should be relatively easy to accomplish since she had already done that herself. "It's time for you to turn in your pom-poms," she finished brightly.

Buffy stood there in a daze as they walk around her. She knew it had been getting bad, but she hadn't thought it had gotten to this point. She was surprised, and hurt that it had been Amber. Tiffany she could have seen. The girl had always been something of a harpy, Buffy felt it was a real shame she wasn't a harpy. If she had been, at least then she would be able to slay her. Amber had always been her friend; the one person she never thought would turn on her.

She turned around slowly, a dangerous light burning in her eyes as she eavesdropped on their conversation from more then twenty feet away while they cut a swath through the student body. A dark scowl slipped on to her face as she stood off to one side off the hall. Students swung to the other side of the corridor with but a single glance at the menacing glare creasing Buffy's face.

"We'll see about this," she growled softly and absently slammed the side of her fist into the row of lockers. She twirled on her heel, marching off in the opposite direction, forcing students to jump out of her path or get run down by the diminutive blonde. In her wake she left a group of gawking classmates staring at the crumpled steel and the row of lockers shoved several inches into the wall.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Dawn stopped just outside her sister's door. It was standing slightly ajar. The young girl figured Buffy had pushed it shut, but hadn't bother to make sure it was closed. As if she was preoccupied with something else. The bustle of activity coming from within lent credibility to her assumption. Silently, probably not quiet enough to sneak up on her big sister. She pushed the door open and stalked across the plush carpet covered floor with exaggerated stealth.

Buffy was standing in front of her large mirror inspecting herself, and her outfit, with an eye critical enough for Brigadier General inspecting his troops. She adjusted the sleeves of her dark burgundy colored belly shirt pulling them down a little exposing another centimeter of her delicate shoulders. She pushed down the bodice revealing a bit more cleavage. Wriggling slightly she lowered the black mini skirt that covered her hips, allowing another fraction of her sun kissed skin to see light.

Her black platform boots gave her another three inches of height. Not that she was concerned over something so trivial, but this way she would almost be able to gaze directly into Spike's bright, scintillating blue eyes. Plus it would make it that much easier for him to sneak glances at her pert breast.

"Big date tonight?" Dawn asked inquisitively. She didn't realize she had spoken out loud until she heard her own voice.

Buffy jumped, spinning around, startled almost out of her boots by her little sister's voice. She knew Dawn had entered her room, had listened to her sister pad across the floor, but she was so intent on looking absolutely perfect for her night out with Spike she had completely forgotten about Dawn. "No," she sputtered unconvincingly. "No big date. Patrol… Just your average, ordinary, no date patrol."

Dawn frowned lightly as she tried to come up with a way to get Buffy to admit she was going out on a date with Spike without asking her. "Is it Josh?" The entries in her diary had become morose of late, almost business like in her description of her battles with the forces of evil. The last three nights there hadn't been any mention of Spike. Today she had been buoyant; bouncing off the ceiling, the walls, and just about everything else. She couldn't wait for Buffy to leave tonight so she could get her hands on her diary and find out just what was up her.

Buffy made a slight eww face as she responded by saying, "Please. Josh is so last month."

"Bobby?"

"With that hair?"

"David?"

"The teeth?" Buffy reminded her.

Dawn bounced on Buffy's bed. "Come on Buffy, who is it? Please?" She finished with a tiny whine as she bounced her feet lazily. It was time to rely on the most sure fired way to get her sister to tell her anything. Begging.

Buffy rolled her eyes as she exhaled. She didn't know why she let her sister get to her so much. It would be such a simple matter to tell her go away and mind her own business, but she had never been able to do that. Since being called as the slayer she has been extremely grateful of the fact. There was one person that wasn't going to abandon her. "All right, but you've got to promise me you won't say anything to mom and dad."

"Like I tell mom and dad anything," Dawn replied confidently.

"And this isn't something you can use to get more money out of me," she added with a stern glare.

Dawn gave Buffy a hurt look as she asked, "Would I do something like that?" Then she swallowed hard as Buffy's expression shifted, becoming less amused. "All right. All right, enough already. I promise I won't tell anybody anything."

The scowl slipped from Buffy's face as everything about her seemed to brighten. Without hesitation she jumped onto her bed next to Dawn causing it to bounce a few times before it came to rest. "His name's Spike," she said it like it was the most important thing in the world.

"You go to school with someone named Spike?" Dawn burst out sounding incredulous.

"No," Buffy replied quickly. "I don't go to school with Spike."

"He goes to a different school?"

Buffy shook her head saying, "He doesn't go to school."

Dawn grinned and asked, "He's older then you?"

"Are you going to spend all night guessing or do you wanna let me tell you about him?" She demanded irritably.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Spike was restless as he prowled the area in front of the carousel, his hand rising and falling quickly as he smoked his cigarette with the finality of a man who believed the world was going to end in a few minutes and wanted to leave nothing unfinished. He grumbled to himself, quite loudly, but for the most part unintelligibly.

He still couldn't believe he had agreed to this. Patrol with the slayer, help her with her slaying. Give her pointers, maybe even a little training. Maybe a little one on one sparing?

Not that he hadn't enjoyed their little impromptu training session last night; showing her the proper use of a palm heel strike to the chest, or how to drive a person off with a sharp knee to the inner thigh or groin, or how to break someone's grip from around the throat.

Whirling around he viciously lashed out kicking a crushed soda can wondering just when he became the slayer's lap dog. He should be ripping her throat out, sucking down her sweet elixir while she struggled feebly.

It wouldn't be a problem now. Getting close would be easy. She trusted him. He could probably even get an invite to her house in the process. Her sister looked like a ripe little plum just waiting to be plucked.

He could. He knew it.

_What do you wind up doing_? He mocked himself. _Waiting for her next to the children's bloody carousel like some pantywaist poser instead of sinking your teeth into her tender throat all because she went and fluttered those thrice damned eyelashes at you_.

He had been going to say no. He really had, but one flutter from those pleading, nearly tear filled eyes and his resolve had melted like ice on a red hot skillet. That was all it took.

_I'm still the Big Bad for cryin' out loud_. _I'm supposed to be out there terrorizing the hapless humans_. _Its what I do_, _what I'm good at_. _The only thing I've ever been good at_.

_Only you're not_. _You're here_. _Waiting like spineless prate_. _Pacing like some nervous schoolboy on his first date_. _All because of a pair of searing hazel eyes touched a part of you_, _a part you thought dead long_…

He whipped back around taking a final drag from his cigarette as he crushed his thoughts as vicious as he crushed the cigarette out under his boot heel. Without conscious thought his hand flew into his duster pocket and retrieved his cigarettes and lighter. Plucking one out of the pack he lit it. The two actions happened so quickly, so close together, they almost seem like one.

She was affecting his life in other ways as well. Not just in finagling his help to kill all the other little fish in the pond, which he didn't mind in the slightest. A vampire was a sight more difficult then killing a human, but not overly much. Still being able to work out his rage was allowing him to get back to being himself.

Only he couldn't because all he could think about was her.

She was there in his head all the time. And not in the, I want to kill you kind of way, unless it was from one little death at a time, but in more of a, I want to get to know everything about you, kind of way.

Worse he wanted her to know everything about him, well maybe not everything but enough to know him. More then that he wanted her to proud of him.

It had gotten to the point were he hasn't been able to feed properly, being forced to buy bottled blood for the last two days.

At first it hadn't been that bad. He didn't mind not killing the people he fed from, leaving them alive so long as he got to sink his teeth into the soft flesh and suck down some steaming hot blood. Killing humans, slayers aside, was hardly challenging.

He tossed his spent cigarette aside. Took a bit more time lighting this one then the last, but to most of the people that see him it still looked like one action. Smoke billowed over his head as he turned back around.

Only now he couldn't even do that. He's tried, he really has, but every time he does, she's there watching him with those large, tinted, imploring eyes. Just like that he couldn't do it. Couldn't sink his teeth in, couldn't eat. Felt like someone had clipped his balls and walked off with them in her purse.

He would show her. He was no milksop to be led around by his nose. He was the Big Bad and if wanted to go out and get himself something to eat then bloody hell, he was going to go get himself something to eat. It wasn't like she had asked him to stop feeding or anything. She didn't ask him to stop killing. She never brought the subject up.

Tossing his cigarette to the ground he quickly lit another. "Where the sodding hell is the bloody little chit?" He growled whipping around.

And stopped dead as he caught sight of the absolutely most beautiful creature his eyes have ever had the privilege of seeing.

Hair, like spun gold, framed her small, oval, nearly angelic face that was highlighted by a tiny button nose and a pair light scintillating eyes. Her skin, the small amount that was left exposed by the very simple powder blue sundress was around her bodice, neck, and shoulders, as well as her arms and calves, was the color of light bronze. The soft cotton material clung tightly to her curves and emphasized her amazingly firm belly. It ended just above her knees leaving her shapely, tanned calves open for the inspection of anyone that cared to look. A pair of tan, open toe sandals, along with a small, white handbag finished off her simple outfit.

In today's culture it was hardly what anybody would call revealing, but for someone who grew up at the end of the Victorian era it was a sight to behold. When he had last needed to draw breath women had been covered in gowns and petticoats, so much cloth they were all but formless underneath. Her simple dress would have been the height of scandalous.

His mouth hung open, his cigarette dangled from his bottom lip as he stared at her. If Drusilla had been his dark princess then Buffy was his sun, a blindingly radiant strand of pure light illuminating his world of darkness with a fiery brilliance. A fire so hot, a light so pure he should be nothing but ash while standing within her presence.

As she sauntered toward him, a gentle sway to her hips, a slight strut to her stride he suddenly remembered his cigarette hanging from his mouth and that he hasn't taken a breath since he first saw, which felt like an eternity ago. With as much grace as he can manage he snatched the cigarette with his right hand, took a deep gulp of oxygen, just as he remembered he didn't actually need to breath, and wound up coughing slightly on the cigarette smoke.

Buffy smiled shyly, an effect that lit her whole face, at Spike's small bout of coughing knowing that she was the cause of it. She was suddenly glad she had followed Dawn's advice and change out of the happy hooker assemble she had been going to wear. She wanted Spike to know she was interested, not that she's easy. Who would have figured her bratty, overly nosey, spying, extortionist of a little sister would have such a good head for dating.

The sun dress was nice. It was taut, hinting at her firm, tone body instead of revealing it. Plus she had strategically left her coat at home. A well timed shiver and Spike, being the gentleman that he was, would be offering her, his duster to keep warm. Not that she really felt cold anymore, but that was a fact he didn't need to know.

"You haven't been waiting long have you?" She inquired demurely, sounding very apologetic.

Spike scoffed coolly as he replied, "Just got here myself. There was this scrumptious little morsel I just couldn't help but sink my teeth into," he finished taking one last drag from his cigarette before flicking the burnt out stub into the small pile he had created while waiting for her. Both their eyes followed the dyeing orange amber to the ground. "Fat lot of blighters you got over here," he said lightly touching her upper arm and guiding her away from the carousel. "No consideration for the aesthetic beauty of a place," he added hoping she forgot that he was the only one she saw toss cigarette butt there.

Buffy shrugged at the comment even though she was practically jumping with joy on the inside. He had been waiting there for her, he had been waiting a long time and he didn't want her to know. "I'm sorry if you were, even a couple of minutes, cause I'm like wicked late, but Dawn, my little sister, had this ultra major crisis that I just couldn't leave her in the middle of," she explained vaguely.

"Course you couldn't just up and walk out on the little nipper," he agreed as Buffy casually let her arm slip upwards until her slim, smooth fingers made contact with Spike's callused palms and gently clasped his larger hand. Spike swallowed hard feeling the warmth of her hand seep into his. "So what kind of disaster did you have to attend to tonight?" He asked trying to sound casual but even he could detect the slight quiver to his voice.

"Just some boy she's got a crush on that's being kind of mean to her," Buffy answered with another little shrug.

"Want me snap the blokes little neck for you? Wouldn't be no trouble," Spike muttered despite his best effort to stop himself. It was bad enough the slayer was able to get under his skin, now he was asking after the Platelet's well being. Next thing he knew he would be showing up at the slayer's house seeking her father's permission to pay court to his daughter. _Know what you are you spineless little halfwit_? _You're addled brain you stupid sod_. _A nancy boy poofter_. _You're buggered ponce_, _that's what you are_.

Buffy shook her head unaware of Spike's silent, inner recriminations. "Thanks," she began shyly, "but if you killed every boy my sister got a crush on that was mean to her you'd wind up wiping out most of southern California."

"It could use a little depopulating if you ask me," Spike replied with his slight, almost evil smirk that Buffy enjoyed seeing so much.

"Maybe," she murmured then glanced up shyly. "You wouldn't mind if we made a quick stop so I can get something to eat. I got so caught with Dawn I just kind of forgot to have dinner and it wouldn't be of the good if I was in the middle of a staking and I faint because my blood sugar is too low. I'd be so embarrassed I don't think I'd be able to show my face out on patrol after that."

"And we just couldn't have that now could we?" Spike mused thoughtfully.

"Exactly," Buffy agreed excitedly, not catching the sarcastic note in his voice. "I promise it won't take us very long, and then we'll be off killing your distant cousins and you can show me what I'm doing wrong or doing right because its like just as important to know what you're doing right and. Oh… Did you make up your mind about training, if you don't want to I understand with us being mortal enemies and everything… Especially the whole we gotta fight to the death thing later and you not wanting to show me all your moves or you might be worried that I'll accidentally stake you… Which I would never do accidentally… Or not accidentally either. At least not until our whole big, dramatic death fight in which case it will be totally on purpose, not an accident because that would…"

"It's all right pet," Spike finally cut in wondering how long she could go on talking without breathing. "We can go get your snack then go off and do a spot of training after."

On impulse she gave him a quick, but fierce hug making sure to press her body into his as she grinned broadly, her eyes lighting up brightly as she pulled back after a few seconds. Things were going better then she could have hoped for. She shivered, a slight tremble that rippled through her body.

Spike felt her shake and looked down at her with concern. "You cold luv?"

Buffy rolled her shoulders lightly as she said, "A little. Guess even California can get chilly in winter. Its okay, I'm a big girl and not like a little cold is going to kill me. Not any more anyway," she finished a trace of sadness tinting her voice.

"Nonsense," Spike growled protectively as he shrugged out of his black duster, draping it around her shoulders. Again her smile was soft yet it seemed to light up her entire face as she snuggle deeper into his coat.


	3. Chap 3: The Fire Inside

Chapter Three: The Fire Inside

Dawn slipped through the small crack in Buffy's bedroom door, as silent as any mouse. The last few days felt like some kind of sublime dream. None of the events of the past week have felt… Real. It was like she had been watching it all happen to somebody else's family, through a hazy, frost covered window.

Christmas had come and gone. Not that it felt like Christmas. Buffy had barely managed to drag herself home before noon. The holiday was supposed to be full of love and joy and good cheer, but the tension was so thick in their house a chainsaw would have been needed to cut through it. Good cheer and love and joy were in very short supply under their roof.

It wasn't that hard to understand though.

A day earlier Buffy had been kicked out of school for starting a fire in the gymnasium during the Winter Coronation Dance. Then she had jumped out of the car while mom was driving them back from their meeting with Mr. Talson, the high school principal.

The only reason Buffy had put the gymnasium to the torch was because the dance had been full of vampires and it was the only way that Buffy could trap and kill the bloodsucking fiends. At least Buffy had told her the gym was full of vampires, not that she had burned it down, but Dawn was smart enough to get two when she added one and one together.

Buffy had told her Lathos was dead, so she wouldn't have to worry about hordes of minions showing up at the house. She hadn't talked about it, just kind of told her in passing when she had come in last night to say good night. Buffy told her the news in a flat voice that she used when telling Mom and Dad she had gotten all her chores done, not that they actually had chores or anything, but something else that was equally mundane… Like homework. Not that Buffy ever did a lot of homework.

Merrick was dead as well. Buffy was blaming herself for him dying. She hadn't told Dawn that or anything, but the young girl knew it for the truth it was.

There were a lot of things Buffy wasn't talking about. Like were she went Christmas Eve. All she said was she had some thing's she had needed to take care of. After that a stony silence had descended over Buffy and try as she might, Dawn couldn't drag another word out of her older sister.

Buffy had begun keeping everything to herself the last few days and to most people, their parents in particular, didn't even notice the change. Dawn had, maybe because the two of them had become so close in recent months. At times Dawn thought she was the only person Buffy ever talked to anymore, and if she was beginning to shut her out… Isolating herself. Dawn didn't like it. The young girl felt like something really bad was looming on the horizon.

There were a few other odd things she had noted about her Buffy's behavior recently. She had been acting really strange at times, especially around mom, whenever the two of them were in the same room for more then five seconds.

Which wasn't often.

There were also the constant glances of herself she would sneak in the mirror. But that wasn't really that strange since Buffy looked at herself all the time anyway. It was more the way she was looking at herself that Dawn was finding strange. Like she was just seeing her true self for the first time, or was looking for something different and was surprised when she didn't find it. There was the small smile that would creep across her lips when she wasn't thinking about anything, or maybe when she was thinking about one thing to the exclusion of everything else. Once she realized it was there though, it disappeared at the speed of light. A dark scowl would replace it.

Then again, Mom hasn't been acting all that normal either. Of course after the bombshell her and dad had dropped on them a week ago… What did normal have to do with anything?

Divorce.

After being married for eighteen years they were calling it quiets like all those years didn't mean anything to them anymore. Eighteen years was almost twice as long as she had been alive. It was two years longer then Buffy's almost sixteen years.

It felt so weird saying that one word.

Divorce.

It almost made Buffy being a superhero seem right.

Almost, but not quite.

Gliding across her sister's carpeted floor Dawn was extremely grateful she didn't have to worry about getting caught. After taking last night off Buffy was once again out patrolling, making the world, or at least part of Los Angeles, safe from evil bloodsuckers. She wouldn't be back until much, much later.

The other thing she was happy about was that Buffy was once again writing in her diary, after a three week hiatus. From the little she had seen last night it looked like Buffy was writing a small novel.

Without making the slightest sound she pulled open the drawer of Buffy's nightstand and deftly extracted the diary from its hiding place. It didn't take the preteen long to find the beginning of her sister's newest entry.

**God, I can't believe it's been so long since my last entry. It doesn't seem like its possible, or like maybe more time should have passed. So much has happened.**

**Too much.**

**Three weeks, twenty-one days, fourteen of them I can actually call good. Not really a bad ratio, not until you hear everything that went on.**

**Put it all in perspective.**

**Then the balance just doesn't seem to add up.**

**And all of it, most of it anyway, is my fault.**

**Merrick, my fault. School, my fault. My parents, my fault. Spike, my fault.**

**I've got to be the worst daughter, student, slayer in history.**

**I feel like I'm being pulled in a thousand different directions all at once.**

**If I was a better daughter I wouldn't be staying out all night. I'd be getting better grades. I'd still be popular. Mom and Dad would still be together.**

**If I were a better slayer, nothing else would matter.**

**I'd quite school, run away from home, and live like some circus freak with my watcher, only coming out at night to ritual performance art and listen to the ohhs and the ahhs, the cheers and the jeers from the macabre** **audience as I do one trick after another, for their amusement, until they all go away, and I can go back to my cage.**

**Only I can't even do that because my watcher's dead and it's my fault.**

**The last time I saw him, I was so angry at him. I didn't like something he told me, threatened me with actually, so I stormed off in a huff and didn't go back to him until after the dance was over.**

**By then it was too late.**

**He was already dead.**

**I know, I'm a long way ahead of where I left off the last time. I guess maybe I should probably start from that point. A time when everything was going so good. When life looked perfect and I didn't think anything would be able to destroy my nice, safe little fantasy world that I created for myself.**

**Everything started off so good.**

**You remember the last time I wrote anything down was the night before my big date with Spike. Who would imagine that Dawn, that's right, I did write Dawn, the bratty little geek girl that is my sister. Can you believe she actually did me this great favor; I really, really owe her.**

**There I was dressed up like sex on a stick, and she suggested that maybe I might want to go a little more conservative. I still can't believe she was right. It was so shocking.**

**Spike was speechless when he first saw me. Not that it lasted long. I don't think there's much out there that can keep Spike speechless for long. Even if he doesn't know what he's actually saying, it never seems to stop him from saying it.**

**I can still remember walking into the multiplex, the envious ripple that swept through my so called friends, former lackeys that they were, when they saw me on Spike's arm. The hot hunk of manly goodness that he is. The fact that I was wearing his coat, and that it wasn't just any old coat, but a full length, black, leather duster of an older man.**

**If they only knew how much older he is.**

**They'd all die.**

**That thought alone almost makes it worth telling them.**

**It felt so great, I swear I could hear jaws hitting the floor. Well, okay. Maybe not, but it was a near thing.**

**There were gasps though. Nice, loud gasps. And the stares. The eyes watching me. Unbelieving eyes that followed me wherever I went.**

**At that moment I knew I had them. I made sure to savor, to relish that sweet moment of vindication. Maybe it's vain of me, or petty, or whatever, I don't really know. They thought they could cast me out and I wouldn't find some way to retaliate.**

**Walking into the Multiplex at the mall, arm in arm with the hottest guy in California, or anywhere else in America, or the rest of the world, had been the first step in my plan.**

**I don't know what had eyes popping more; the hotness that is Spike, his Victorian mannerism, his rebellious nature, or the blunt, brutal way he spoke to people without ever coming across as rude.**

**When he asked me if I wanted him to eat a few, to thin out the herd, I thought I was going to die.**

**How I wish I could've said yes, but…**

**I just couldn't.**

**I didn't, I still don't, want to know how Spike is, or was getting his food. As long as I didn't know, I wouldn't have to feel guilty, or neglectful, about the people he had to be killing.**

**It didn't take a lot of effort on my part to convince Spike it would be just as convenient for us to eat while watching a movie as it would be if we took our food someplace else. A little flutter of the eyelashes and he was like putty in my hands.**

**Spike picked the movie. It was the least I could do since he paid for the tickets. Surprisingly the movie had absolutely nothing to do with blood and guts, but was some comedy starring Bill Murray. I think it was called The Man Who Knew Too Little. It was funny, I suppose. If you like that sort of thing. Which I guess Spike does since he laugh just about all the way through the movie. I know this since I was watching him through the entire movie.**

**Alright. I wasn't technically watching him. It was more my head was resting on his shoulder. I don't think I've ever felt so content, so relaxed in my entire life.**

**Everything felt so, I don't know.**

**Like that was the exact place I was always meant to be. Fate. Destiny. Karma. Whatever it was, it was perfect.**

**How weird is that.**

**Spike. Vampire. Blood thirsty killer.**

**Me. Slayer. Killer of blood thirsty monsters.**

**You'd think I'd be more nervous, edgy around Spike, but that couldn't be farther from the truth then Pluto is from the sun.**

**I know it's a big number, but aside from that I don't have a clue as to how big of a number it is.**

**Astronomical maybe?**

**Patrol afterwards was a blast. Just like he promised the night before, a lot of hands on training. More like live action fights between the two of us. It was possibly the most eye opening experience of my life.**

**Spike was literally able to manhandle me. And I don't think he was even half trying.**

**I know. I should have been frightened, terrified. Spike could kill me if he wanted to. But I wasn't. It was exciting, thrilling. Exhilarating. Since being called it's the first time I've faced someone, one on one and lost.**

**I can't help but get the feeling that he wants me to kill him. That all of his talk about us fighting to the death is just that. Talk. Bluster. A bunch of hot air. I don't doubt that he wants us to fight to the death.**

**His death.**

**I just know that sometime during our big fight he would make a mistake. Some little slip up that would lead to his end.**

**Deep down, in my heart, in the very core of my being, I just know it.**

**I don't think I could do it.**

**Already his tiniest little smile, the slightest quirk of his amazingly expressive eyebrows, that devil may care smirk. It's enough to make my knees go weak. The sound of his soft voice, like a ghostly caress, sends a slow flush burning along every inch of my raw, oversensitive flesh. His touch is enough to make that exquisitely heated chill build to a slow boil in my center, as my body breaks out in a cold sweat.**

**Just remembering the way it felt when...**

**Whoa, kind of jumping ahead there. Gotta keep everything in order here. Keep it all straight in my head.**

**Who knew things could turn so badly, so quickly?**

**Take out the vampire and slayer parts and it would make a bad movie of the week. Keep them in and it would make an even worse horror movie of the week.**

**I was right about what would happen showing up at the Cineplex with Spike. It solidified my place in the school's social hierarchy. Having an older boyfriend, one that was out of school, from England, that nobody else knew.**

**Everybody suddenly wanted to be my friend again. Wanted me back at the lame excuses they called party's.**

**All of which I had to decline because my boyfriend didn't like associating with the socially inferior.**

**Okay, so maybe my plan lacked a bit of follow through? So maybe I didn't think it out beyond the "lets get everyone gawking phase"?**

**How was I supposed to know it was nothing more then a stop gap? Or that it wasn't going to feel as vindicating as I thought it would? Or that I wasn't going to be allowed to step foot on campus before Christmas?**

**But at least for a week and half, almost two, I was back on top. I was in control. Everybody wanted to be my friend again.**

**Then the rumors started.**

**I can just imagine who started them. I never did find out, and it's not like I'm going to now, but I can just imagine. Not that I'm going to go throwing around names when I don't have any proof.**

**That would just be small and petty.**

**I never really heard them anyway. People just kind of clamed up whenever I was around.**

**Besides I had more important things on my mind at the time. While my life hadn't officially begun to spiral out of control yet, that would come in the days that followed, it was definitely heading in that direction.**

**It's just so much happened, in such a short time.**

**Too much maybe.**

**I don't think I'll ever be the same person again. I hope I won't anyway. Looking back on it now I can see what a selfish bitch I was.**

**Not that it helps me out now.**

**Not that anything can help me out.**

**After our "first date" everything just kind of fell into a comfortable routine. We'd go out, do something innocuous, innocent.**

**On our, "second date", I made the mistake of complaining about my English lit mid term that we were starting to prep for. Instead of doing any training Spike dragged me off to the library. That it was closed didn't slow him down in the slightest. I spent the entire night studying, and for the first time ever it made sense.**

**By the way, aced my midterm two weeks later.**

**Who would have guessed, with the way Spike looks and acts that he'd make such a good tutor? Even the breaking and entering was educational.**

**Of course Merrick wasn't too pleased that I wasn't out slaying, but it wasn't like I hadn't been killing off truckloads of vampires anyway.**

**It wasn't the only time we were going to get into it, especially over my slaying schedule. He thought I should just drop out of school, said it was taking too much time away from my sacred duty. I'm not going to bother writing down what I told him.**

**It's not like he wasn't loving how quickly my fighting skills were improving. What was the word he liked brandying around?**

**Phenomenal.**

"**This was phenomenal", "Or that's phenomenal", or, "You're making phenomenal strides". Leaps and bounds and all that kind of stuff.**

**He was constantly mumbling and muttering about my progress. Like I was some kind of prize monkey and I'd just have to stand there with that bright, but nobody's home, smile plastered on my face and take it.**

**I'm a human being, with her life falling to pieces around her. I wasn't some lab animal, a little rat running through its cage to get to the cheese. It would have been nice for him to remember that. At times I just wanted to scream or shout, rip my hair out, or shove my fist through his smug, condescending British face.**

**Okay so maybe hanging around Spike wasn't doing a lot for my, "can't we all just get along", attitude. Then again I was never one for all that, "lets give peace a chance", bunk anyway.**

**Maybe if I could have told him the truth. Then maybe things might have turned out differently. Only I knew I couldn't. I knew he'd react exactly how he did.**

**I gotta stop doing that.**

**I knew with the way I was acting, my behavior, I was setting myself up for the world to come crashing down around me.**

**I built up this whole fantasy world and refused to look out at reality.**

**Why should I?**

**Reality was this hard, cold, bitter place that I didn't like a whole lot. So why shouldn't I fight tooth and nail to keep it out of my perfect little world?**

**Not that it stayed out.**

**First clue that reality sucks big time.**

**Almost two weeks after our first date, Spike decided I needed a break, like I said, "vampires by the truck load", so he took me out to diner. It was this quaint little Italian place. Had this nice family atmosphere. Nothing snooty or snobbish about the place.**

**This was like our first real date. All Spike's idea. Nothing contrived on my part. I wasn't even dressed to go to diner at such a nice place.**

**I knew vampires could eat human food. Spike was always getting a craving for this or that, but this was the first time I ever saw him eat an actual meal. A complete four course diner.**

**It was going perfectly. It was the best night of my life. I know, I said the same thing about the movie and it was at the time, but it isn't anymore. Even Spike drinking beer instead of wine seemed to fit right in.**

**Then, "IT", happened. That cold slap of reality hitting you square between the eyes, letting you know, "IT", was about to bring the house down.**

**I was on my second plate of spaghetti and meatballs, with lots of bread. Slayer metabolism. Some days I think I can eat a horse and still not be full. Fortunately I never get really hungry anymore either. There's a trade off there somewhere, but I don't really know what it is.**

**Tangents. I really hate them. They should be banned, outlawed even.**

**So there I was. Enjoying my food, my wine, Spike's company. Just being in his presence is like breathing in pure bliss.**

**Have I mentioned that before? No. Well, it is.**

**Pure, one hundred percent unadulterated bliss.**

**Okay, back to the point.**

**Food, wine, and Spike's company.**

**Here we are on the opposite side of town from where I live and who should show up? My father. And who does he have with him? Somebody that definitely wasn't my mother. And with the way he had his hand on her back. Her lower back, like right above her ass. Hell he might as well have been patting her ass, it might have been less obvious.**

**She didn't even look that much older then me, but I was being served a pleasantly robust red wine with my diner.**

**It was so infuriating. I just wanted to jump up and storm over to him, slap him upside his head. Beat him and shake him until I knocked some sense into him. Make him promise that he'd stop cheating on mom.**

**I didn't, I couldn't, I wanted to, but…**

**I wasn't supposed to be there, especially not on a date drinking wine. I knew dad would have grounded me, or tried to something parental, not that he ever had before. Who knows, maybe he would've tried to blackmail me. Or offer me a bribe. One of those, you keep your mouth shut, I keep my mouth shut, kind of deals.**

**I really hate when reality forces its way into my own little fantasy world.**

**Sitting in my seat, staying my hand. Not just at the restaurant, but at home as well, has been one of the hardest things I've ever done. Doing anything would have ruined my perfect little dreamscape though, and as much as I hate to admit it…**

**I really am nothing but a selfish, spoiled little princess.**

**After that we just kind of snuck out of there. Not that there was much chance of dad spotting me. Not when he couldn't take his eyes off little Ms. Miniskirt.**

**Vampires didn't fair well that night. For some reason I had a lot of rage I needed to get off my chest.**

**That was the first sign. The first leak in the damn. After that the flood gates just started opening up.**

**The following night…**

**I still don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't, not really. I think it was more like musing, thinking something in my head, but I was actually saying it out loud. Or maybe I was feeling guilty about not confronting my father that subconsciously I deliberately shot myself in the foot.**

**It was right after school. My normal training time with Merrick. Like always he was going on and on about how much improvement I've made.**

**I don't know why I asked, I really wasn't thinking about it. My mind was just kind of blah, blah, blah; when all of a sudden the question just sort of popped out.**

"**Could a vampire ever be good?"**

**I think Merrick's eyes just about popped clean out of their sockets. He actually turned blue before he remembered to breath. He never did answer me. Just asked, "Why?"**

**Always have to wonder what a person is hiding when they answer a question with a question.**

**Things deteriorated after that. I was so tired of hiding the fact that Spike was helping me that I didn't lie to him. Well you can guess that Merrick wasn't happy about that. Not at all.**

**Our conversation disintegrated from there. Lots of yelling and shouting. It ended with me storming out telling Merrick that if he didn't like the way I was doing my job he could do it himself.**

**That came right after Merrick told me the council had ways of dealing with slayers who don't know how to do their jobs.**

**What was that suppose to mean anyway? Had ways of dealing with slayers? Was it supposed to be some kind of death threat?**

**I never got the chance to ask him. I never saw him again. Alive.**

**What I did see, I wish I hadn't. Wish I could just burn it out of my mind.**

**Wasn't very good company when I saw Spike that night. I was sullen, quiet, withdrawn. Not good company at all. No matter how hard I tried to break out of that rut, which was with every fiber of my being, I just couldn't. I think Spike thought that I was upset with him, which I wasn't.**

**But every so often I couldn't help but wonder if Merrick was right. It was there and gone, burned up in the recesses of my mind like a shooting star. Sometimes though little ambers remained behind. As much as I tried to stamp them out they just wouldn't go away.**

**The next day and the one after that I went home after school instead of going to Merrick's for training. Figure let him stew for a little while. Make him come crawling back to me.**

**Maybe if I had gone there instead of home Merrick would still be alive. I don't know. I don't think so.**

**I just can't help but think, what if?**

**What if I had done this? What if I had done that?**

**Want to know the real reason I wished I had gone to Merrick's instead of home? Probably not, you're nothing more then wood pulp… Do they still use wood pulp to make paper?**

**Never mind…**

**It had nothing to do with the possibility of keeping him alive. It's just, maybe if I had been there instead of home then Mom and Dad might still be together. It's because I was home that night that they told us.**

**Pretty selfish, huh? Not to mention petty.**

**But I think we've already established the fact that I'm really not all that nice of a person.**

**So, moving on now.**

**They couldn't wait until after Christmas to give us the good news. Couldn't pretend just a little while longer. Let me and Dawn have one final happy holiday together as a whole family? Like it would have killed them to keep the happy faces on for another week or so.**

**Then again with how much they've been arguing lately. Maybe it would have.**

**Mom and dad getting divorce. I still can't believe it and it's been four days now and I still…**

**I feel numb, like none of its real.**

**I don't want to believe it.**

**I knew they were having problems, but divorce? I hadn't realized it had gone that far. Or I didn't want to know?**

**Probably the second.**

**Then again it wasn't like I was actually around here all that much the past month. It was like I had just tossed my family onto the back burner or something believing that they would always be there, just like they were. Never changing.**

**Spike wasn't a lot of help either. Sure he listened just fine, but no help.**

**The past couple nights he had been kind of distant, like something was troubling him, only he wouldn't talk about it. At least not then.**

**When he did, I wish he had kept his mouth shut.**

**It wasn't like I wasn't having problems. My parents splitting up, Merrick, I don't know, threatening to have me killed, I suppose. Just so the council could get themselves an obedient little slayer that wouldn't think for herself, and Spike still not agreeing to take me to the winter fling.**

**Those are problems.**

**At least I thought they were.**

**That night just went from bad, with my parents big announcement, to worse with me and Spike having our first big fight.**

**I'm still trying to figure out how we went from talking, having a civil conversation, to Spike saying it was for the best if we didn't spend so much time together, to him telling me I should grow up and stop acting like a spoiled little baby. That everybody in the world has problems and some of them were actually more important then me.**

**I still want to know who or what could possibly be more important then me, and have problems that outweigh mine?**

**See that. You couldn't tell me so obviously they don't exist.**

**That wasn't even the worst part though. If you can believe it, because I can't? He up and walked away, just left me standing there. Without saying a word. Turned around and just about disappeared right there.**

**And I was left standing there alone.**

**Speechless.**

**Flabbergasted.**

**Trying to figure out just what happened.**

**This just came out of nowhere. Everything had been going so great and then we shouldn't see each other. What kind of crap was that? Did we just break up, but how could we break up if we weren't actually dating.**

**Come to think of it Spike had started withdrawing right after I mentioned the Winter Fling, and kind of sort of hinted that I wanted him to take me. Is that the reason why?**

**Then again maybe he was just sensing my own unease.**

**If only we'd talked then I'd know why I wasn't going to have a date for the dance in two nights.**

**Did I do something to drive him off? Frighten him? Was I too needy? Was I not attentive enough when he was talking?**

**What exactly is it that I did wrong?**

**It's probably something I'll never find out. At least now. I don't think I'm likely to see Spike again. Not after our last encounter. Not with how I left things.**

**Maybe he was right? Maybe we shouldn't see each other. Maybe it is for the best?**

**And maybe Hitler had it right.**

**I think not!**

**I just wish I knew why he decided**

**Sorry about that. Dawn came in and I really can't get any writing done while she's around. In case I've never mentioned this before, Dawn can talk your ear off. Literally. I've seen her do it. Pour guy's ear fell off while she was babbling along. At times I don't even think she needs to breath while her mouth is running.**

**I really shouldn't tease her so much, it's just kind of easy to do. I mean it was pretty nice of her, coming in here, checking up on me, making sure I'm okay and everything after what's gone on this week. Sometimes she acts so mature its hard to remember that she's only nine. She makes me look like the little kid.**

**I couldn't tell her the truth. I mean she was so sweet, so concerned about me. I couldn't tell her the truth.**

**I don't even know what the truth is.**

**Not really. Not enough to tell it to someone else.**

**How could I tell her that it's all my fault. That I'm the one to break up are parents. The way they were yelling and screaming at each the other day on the way home from the school after the dance, the fire, about me.**

**Always about me.**

**I didn't even recognize them.**

**I should have. It wasn't the first time I've seen them argue like that. Always about me. At least it always seems like it's about me.**

**Just remembered I don't think I've written anything about the dance. Not that I want to talk about the dance, my last dance at Hemery High. Didn't know it at the time, but…**

**Let's see, it started off at abysmal and quickly went downhill from there.**

**Amber started it all off by asking, in that I already know and have told everyone kind of voice, where my boyfriend was. Fortunately I had been preparing my answer for that question all day. Unfortunately I never got the chance to give it, that Spike was off in Europe on a book signing tour, because about twenty of Lathos' cronies crashed the dance.**

**I thought about not saving Amber, just kind of looking the other way as some random vamp drained her dry, but I couldn't really let some pour vampire get food poisoning.**

**Could I?**

**I could go into all the gory details now. Describe the fight an agonizing detail. Punch for punch, kick for kick. All the back flips and neat acrobatics. How I felt terrified and exhilarated all at the same. How the blood just seemed to rush to my brain, and how my gut felt all twisted in knots.**

**I could. But none of that matters.**

**The only thing that does matter, the long and the short of it…**

**I won.**

**Not a vampire that walked into the gymnasium that night walked out. True there wasn't a gymnasium to walk out of afterwards.**

**I won, but it still feels like I lost.**

**Everyone saw. The entire school staring at me, gawking, like I'm some kind of freak. Fighting, saving everyone's life, yet I'm still the one that felt like an outcast.**

**I don't how or when or why, but sometime during the fight a fire had started. A spark, lace doilies, paper. Everything went up like a roman candle. Whatever that's suppose to mean.**

**They never had any evidence that I started the fire, obvious since they never arrested me, but I was convenient. The school troublemaker, or so I'd been labeled lately, the scapegoat they needed.**

**It didn't help my case with the fact that I ran off before the police or a fire inspector talked to me. Kind of made it look like I started it. I was anger, lashing out. My grades had been slipping, I was isolating myself. The girl whose parents were in the middle of a separation, with the divorce coming soon.**

**I guess that's a plausible explanation. I mean my life is going to hell in a hand basket, in more ways then one. Its something a lot of kids do when there parents split up. Starting fires. It gives them a feeling of control, or so I've heard.**

**Law and Order or NYPD Blue or one of those other crime dramas did an episode on that very subject. I think. I kind of remember seeing something like that.**

**After dealing with the vampires at the dance I made a beeline for Merrick's. In all honesty I don't know why I felt this overwhelming urge to get to Merrick as quickly as possible. I just knew that I had to. It was like I had this buzzing in my head, telling me I had to get there, to run harder, move faster. A bee in the bonnet, a bur under the saddle, that was driving me onward.**

**Not fast enough.**

**Never fast enough.**

**I burst through the front door. The house was dark, didn't matter with my vision. It didn't matter, there was no one downstairs. I couldn't sense anyone in the house.**

**No one alive.**

**I could hear something from upstairs.**

**A slow creaking.**

**My heart was beating so fast I thought it just might burst through my chest as I started climbing the stairs. It felt like a heavy trip hammer pounding on the inside of my ribs. I couldn't breath, I had broken out in a cold sweat, and my brain had frozen, locked in place.**

**All you had to do was cue up the creepy music and I would have felt like I was in a bad horror movie. The type were you know the monster is just going jump out any second.**

**Give me the monster any day of the week.**

**Them I know how to deal with.**

**What I found.**

**I hope I never get use to seeing that. It was**

**God, it was the worst thing I've ever seen.**

**It**

**I don't even want to think about it.**

**Its one of those things that gets burned into your mind. An image seared directly into your brain. One you can never, ever get rid of.**

**I think I gasped.**

**I can remember backing away from his body as it swung back and forth.**

**That's when I first heard him. Lathos. A voice as smooth as silk, like a little slice of heaven brought to earth. I think he said, "What a lovely child." Or something like it. I'm not sure what happened over the next few minutes. It was all kind of fuzzy, clouded over with Lathos' voice.**

**The next thing I remember with any clarity was the sound of music. Opera, I think? Somebody wailing in a language I don't understand.**

**At the time I didn't know where it came from, or why it had suddenly came on. All I knew was that it broke me out of the daze Lathos had put me in.**

**When I checked the house, after dusting Lathos, a joke and a half once you got down to the actual fighting, I found that Merrick had his radio set to turn on at a specific time. A favorite program apparently. Pretty incredible, even dead Merrick still managed to save my life.**

**Kinda gotta love a guy that can do that for you.**

**I got out of there as fast as I could after that. The last thing I needed was being found at the scene of a murder not even an hour after fleeing a fire. It was definitely turning out not to be a good night to be me.**

**I wondered around for awhile after that, getting home just in time to change and leave for school, not that I knew if it had been cancelled because of fire damage or not.**

**Didn't stop the principal from calling me into his office. Or having my parents come in. Not a pleasant way to spend the day before Christmas. I was told if there was even the slightest evidence that I had anything to do with starting the fire I'd be in custody there and then. As it was I was no longer welcome at Hemery High School. In fact if I was found within five hundred feet I would be arrested for violated a restraining order.**

**Mom and Dad threw up the whole united front. It was pretty remarkable seeing them do that. Too bad it only lasted while we were there. Once we were back in the car everything went right back to normal.**

**They started yelling and screaming at each other. I felt like I turned invisible, I wish I had, while they shoved the blame back and forth at each other. I'm just glad Dawn still had school that day. She doesn't need to be put in the middle of all the problems I'm causing.**

**It was like they had forgotten how to talk at a normal decibel level. They had to try and out shout the other, like if their voice wasn't louder then their point wouldn't get made.**

**I just wanted to get away from them. So I did. We weren't even half way home when I'd finally had enough. I was out of the car and running down the street, in the opposite direction while dad was still slowing down for a stop sign. I don't even know if they knew I was out of the car then.**

**I was just so tired of it. I needed to get away. Figure things out for myself. I don't know what I had to figure out, but I knew I had to and I knew I couldn't do it with them around.**

**So here I was, wondering the streets, kicked out of school, no watcher, no friends, and definitely no boyfriend.**

**Nothing.**

**I ended up walking and thinking and accomplishing nothing. Just walking around and around.**

**Merrick was dead, I was under suspicion of starting the fire that burnt down the gym, Spike had suddenly decided that it wasn't a good idea for us to do whatever it was we were doing.**

**Somehow I wound up in a section of town I've never been in before. Never even driven through before. I didn't even know it existed until I looked around. The buildings were dingy, the streets dirty. The people looked mean. I felt completely out of place in this section of L.A. and I've never felt out of place anywhere in this city before. Then again, before I'd never been down here.**

**I wasn't worried about a bunch of dispirited people though. Being the slayer gave me that much at least.**

**Heck, I can handle half a dozen vampires and barely break a sweat. How many problems can a handful of people give me? Still it wasn't like I was planning on taking up residence down here or anything.**

**As I turned around to leave I spotted something I never would have expected to see. Not down here, not in a millions years.**

**Spike's Desoto.**

**Normally it would have been impossible for me to tell one old black car from any other old black car, but the blacked out windows let me know exactly who owned the car. Of course who ever said that other vampires couldn't black out the windows to their cars as well.**

**I can be such a fool at times.**

**I saw what I wanted to see and didn't even give a thought to any other possible explanation. I wanted it to be Spike's car. Fortunately it was, a few of the people that I questioned in the area recognized his description. It took me half an hour to find him, or to find the building he was living in. Actually finding Spike took me another ten minutes, and most of that was talking to some of the buildings other tenants.**

**Everyone in the building knew him, everybody loved him. As far as I could tell anyway. The enigmatic tough guy loner that was always willing to help out.**

**I know, it doesn't sound like Spike, but that was how the people I talked to described him.**

**He was kind of surprised to see me standing there in his doorway when he opened the door. Said something like, "So what? Stalking me now," in that annoying accent he used when he wanted to be especially insulting.**

"**No," I started off sounding indignant. "I was just out walking and I spotted your car, not too many black Desoto's with the windows blacked out." I sounded so haughty telling him that.**

"**Be surprised," he mumbled and walked away.**

**Without even bothering to invite me in.**

**Can you say rude much? But I just kind of thought, fine two can play this game. If he wasn't going to invite me in, I wasn't going to wait to be invited, so I walked in.**

"**What are you doing here?" He asked without even bothering to look at me as he made his way through his pallor to the little nook that functioned as his kitchen.**

"**I told you I was out walking and spotted…"**

"**Shouldn't you be in school or something?" He cut in.**

**God, he can be the most aggravating vampire in the world. Just thought I'd interject that here. In case it wasn't obvious.**

**I decided it was time to stop being nice. "Why are you doing this?" Okay, there had been a bit more whine in my voice then I wanted there. He just stood there, staring at me with blank eyes. "I thought we were friends?" Voice was firmer that time.**

"**Make yourself at home," he said grabbing his duster off the back of a wooden chair. "I got things I gotta go take care of," he added as he slipped his arms into the black leather sleeves.**

**It was the middle of the day, well okay moving on towards evening, but still did he think I was stupid. "What things?" I demanded blocking his path to the door.**

**He looked down at me then. There was something in his eyes, only there for a moment before it vanished: sadness, regret, longing, love; I don't know, it could have been me just wishing to see something that wasn't there. Then they hardened and he said, "Evil vampire things. Or what, did you think I stopped killing people just because I was teaching you how to be good little slayer." He must have seen the anger reflecting in my eyes because the next thing he said was, "Aw, ain't that sweet. You did. Naive little chit aren't you?"**

**I had never heard his voice sound so cruel, so hurtful. "What's going on? We're friends."**

"**We were never friends," he scoffed. "You're pathetic, you know that right? A slayer that has to be taught how to be a slayer, and still you can't get it right." His voice was an evil sneer, then he was brushing his way pass me making for the door.**

**I grabbed hold of his arm spinning him back around as I cried, "We were friends."**

"**You still don't get?" He growled shoving me back. "I'm a vampire, you're the slayer. We'll never be friends and you're a fool for thinking it and I'm an idiot for believing it. Someday I'm going to come after your head and if you want to live, you…"**

**I hit him. He's got this way of just digging in under your skin and finding the right buttons to push. It felt good to just rear back and let him have it. It was like I was in shock; I couldn't believe that I hit him, and that it felt good.**

**Before I could apologize though Spike hit me. It didn't hurt, more surprise and excited. There was this look in Spike's eyes, the same as before but more powerful, passionate. It was like a hunger I've only ever spotted in them from time to time, but never like this. This full force glare that was boring into me.**

**Everything happened in a blur after that. I'm not really sure how they went from there to where they ended up. I know I hit him back, then he hit me, and it kind of went on like that for a while.**

**It wasn't fighting, the punches were no where near strong enough to hurt, but it wasn't training either.**

**It was something else entirely.**

**Something deeper. Something fiery, passionate.**

**During the middle of, whatever it was we doing. Foreplay, maybe, I don't know what, but we went from fighting to making out to – I can't believe I'm going to write this down – sex.**

"Buffy had sex?" Dawn gasped, her bright blue eyes widening to the size of saucers. All the other thoughts in her head evaporating in a flash.

She's heard of sex before. She's just never known anyone that's ever actually had sex. Well parents obviously because there couldn't be children without parents having sex.

She knew that much.

But she has always been told it was something that only happened between husbands and wives. Her eyes scrunch up as she wondered if that meant Buffy and Spike are married now. There hadn't been a wedding and Buffy was still far too young to get married.

Even with only being nine Dawn knew that. At least she thought she did. She wasn't as sure as what she used to be.

She gave her head a small shake as she looked back down at Buffy's diary. There are still a couple of pages left for her to read.

Probably a lot of it was Buffy complaining about being forced to move to some crappy little town, three hours – if you obeyed the speed limit – south of Los Angeles, called Sunnydale. Not like it wasn't her fault they had to move there in the first place. Because there are so many schools out there that want a suspected arsonist in their student body.

Dawn turned her attention back to the dairy.

**It was the most incredible feeling I've ever known. From my head down to my toes and everywhere in-between. Every cell in my body, every fiber of my being exploding all at once. Being totally and completely filled.**

**I felt alive. For the first time in my entire life. I was truly alive.**

**I don't even have the words to describe how wonderful it felt. How I felt. Anything I write down will just sound so trite. Like fireworks, and the world moving, an orchestras playing in the background. None of it even comes close to describing what it was like.**

**It still feels strange. I feel strange, because I don't feel any different. I keep looking at myself in the mirror, staring at myself, expecting to see something different about myself, but I still look the same.**

**I thought mom would have been able to tell right away. Take one look at me, gasp and shout out some inane comment. So far she hasn't, but then again I haven't really been around her that much since coming home Christmas morning and she hasn't forced the confrontation I know is coming.**

**It was sometime in the early hours of the morning when we finally fell asleep. The apartment was a mess. We completely trashed the place. I don't know if it happened while we were fighting or while we were, you know, having sex.**

**I want to call it making love, but that doesn't even come close to describing what we were doing. It was wild. There was an air of abandonment, like we sort of left rational thought behind. Like it had no place where we were.**

**I woke up sometime around dawn. I felt so content, satisfied. Like I was a completely different person. More mature, older.**

**Spike's duster was wrapped around me and I could feel him spooned against my back. His hand resting on my thigh. It was then that I realized exactly what had happened the night before, that morning.**

**A moment before I had been dozing in contentment, post sexual bliss I suppose, and then I was wide awake with one thought running through my head.**

**It was more like two thoughts that formed one.**

**I had sex with Spike.**

**Then there was, mom's going to kill me.**

**With as much stealth as I could muster, I gathered my clothes, the ones I could find, got dressed and slunk out of Spike's apartment.**

**That was when I found out just how much damage we had done to the place. It was a frightening wake up call. The previous night it didn't even register. It all seemed like a vague haze**

Dawn jumped off the bed, Buffy's diary falling to the floor as the bedroom door banged open. Her eyes widen as the thought of Buffy catching her flashed through her mind. She quickly searched for someplace to hide before realizing there's no point. There was no place to hide.

Then the only thing worse then having Buffy walking into view from around the little corner created by the closet happened. Her mother stepped into her field of vision, a tall woman with a very commanding presence.

Joyce doesn't say anything as her scowl took in her youngest daughter. She spotted Buffy's diary lying on the floor. Its presence more then supporting the reason for Dawn's exclamation a few minutes earlier when she had been walking past Buffy's door. It was taking almost all of her self control not to yell at Dawn and instead calmly asked, "What's going on here?"

Dawn gulped slightly as she gazed up at her mother, she recognized that overly calm voice. It was like the calm that precedes the storm. That deathly quiet right before everything erupted. She's heard it often enough when Buffy's done something wrong, but she's never had it directed at her before.

She knew she had three options. Tell the truth and be grounded for life. Lie and be grounded for life. Claim a complete short term memory loss, and still be grounded for life.

Joyce eyebrows arch slightly while Dawn remained silent. "Well?"

"I thought I heard Buffy and came in to talk to her but nobody was here and I found her diary lying open on the bed and I was going to put it back when you came in," she explained in a rush as Joyce continued to stare at her with a critical eye while folding her arms across her chest.

"And just how do you know where Buffy keeps her diary?" She inquired in a level voice.

Dawn blinked owlishly a moment before her head dipped slightly and she nibbled unconsciously on her lower lip while she tried to think up a plausible explanation. That Buffy told her where it was wasn't going to fly.

"I suggest you go to bed and when I ask you the same question in the morning you better have a better answer then the one you just gave me. Preferably the truth and maybe, just maybe you won't be grounded until your senior prom."

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Buffy slid her window close after slipping into her room. It had been a rather slow night. She thought Lathos' death might have something to do with that. Without him there to create and direct hordes of minions L.A. was becoming almost placid.

As is often the case since Christmas any thought of vampires sent her thoughts spiraling towards one vampire, a certain scrumptiously, delectable platinum blonde vampire that could do incredible things with his tongue. Not to mention other parts of his anatomy.

It wasn't the first time she has wondered if maybe she had made a mistake sneaking out of his apartment the morning after. Still she hasn't gone back to see him, talk to him. Find out where things stood between them. Her emotions concerning Spike are extremely convoluted. At times she felt like she was walking a mental minefield trying to decipher what she really feels for him.

She knows she's in love with him; he is the man who took her virginity so that meant they were in love. _Didn't it_? That's a constant question running through her mind. Another was, _how can I love someone who can make me so angry so quickly_?

She didn't want a relationship like her parents, an explosion waiting to happen. Not that she thought she is going to live long enough to have that. Not with the life expectancy slayers have. Another two years if she was good. Six if she were lucky as well.

Stepping around her bed she came to a stop as she feels somebody else in the room with her. As she turned around, towards the back corner of her room Buffy spun right into the sudden brilliance of her vanity light coming to life.

Just before her sudden bout of blindness she caught a glimpse of her mother sitting in the wooden rocking chair. An antique her grandfather had made for his wife, her grandmother, which had been passed to her with her passing. It's as solid today as it was the day it had been made.

Buffy caught the small book, her diary, as it sailed toward her. A small, horrified expression blossomed on her face. Before she could say anything Joyce demanded, "Is it true?"

The words were said in a whisper, but for Buffy they might as well been shouted at her with a bull horn. Her mind seemed to slow down, almost like she was getting ready for a fight. She took in everything as her brain analyzed all the various scenarios she could imagine.

"You read my diary!" Buffy burst out as everything snapped back into real time.

"Answer the question!" Joyce snapped back losing the rather tenuous grip she had on her temper. She knew it wasn't fair, the two separate ways she has always treated her daughters, but Buffy has always been headstrong, willful, and independent. Almost to the point of being insolent. She has always needed a stronger hand in dealing with Buffy.

Buffy shook her head angrily as she waved the flat book at her mother. Joyce rose swiftly to her feet needing every inch she has to loom over her eldest. "You had no right…"

"I'm your mother," Joyce cut in sharply while taking a step forward.

Buffy frowned at the feeling of dread lacing its way through her stomach and gripping her heart. She's faced down vampires and demons, charged head long into life and death fights with barely a tremble, yet her mother could still make her afraid.

"I have every right to know what's going on in your life. Now how long has this been going on?" She demanded placing special emphasis on this.

Stiffening her back Buffy ground her teeth and tossed her diary back at Joyce who barely managed to catch hold of the book. "You've read my diary. You do the math," she snarled at her mother.

Joyce tossed the journal onto Buffy's bed. In a loud hiss she said, "You listen here young lady. This is the last chance to tell me just how long this… Thing has been going on."

"A month!" Buffy shouted at her. "It started just after Thanksgiving, but did you or dad notice anything? You two were so busy shouting and screaming at each other, trying to find new ways of hurting the other one, that neither of you even noticed that Dawn spent every night crying herself to sleep or that I wasn't coming home till two, three, sometimes four in the morning, just so long as you won the argument, or got the last word in, who cares if your daughters' life is falling to pieces around her!" She cried, hot tears streaming down her face. She tries to wipe them away, but her hands were shaking so much she could barely control them.

"Sshhh," Joyce soothed as she moved forward gathering Buffy into her arms. At first Buffy flinched at the contact, it has been so long since Joyce has tried to comfort her it felt alien. Joyce however refused to let Buffy brush her away and eventual the young girl relented and allowed her mother to engulf her in a solid hug. She whispered soft, comforting words to her daughter without knowing what she was saying.

_A month_. Buffy has been having sex for a month now and she didn't have a clue it was going on. Buffy had been right about the reason why as well. She was so caught up in her battle with Hank she didn't see anything else going on around her.

That was going to change. From now on she was going to be there for her daughters. Both of them.

Her eyes shifted to Buffy's diary as she wondered what other secrets her eldest daughter might be keeping. Just as quickly she discarded the idea. Buffy should trust her enough to tell her anything. If she doesn't it was her own fault and something she was going to have to work on regaining. Joyce knew it wasn't going to be an easy task, but it was one she's determined to accomplish.

Still she wasn't going to tell Buffy that it was Dawn that had been reading her diary. The two girls have always been close and she didn't want to ruin that bond just so she could regain a little of Buffy's confidence.

That she was going to have to do the old fashion way.


	4. Chap 4: I Go to Extremes

Musical notes: "I Go to Extremes" is preformed by Billy Joel. Lyrics can be found at sing365 com

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Chapter Four: I Go to Extremes

* * *

The sun had set long ago on the west coast and darkness was thick over the small town of Sunnydale, California. Most of its denizens had retired indoors for the night. It was simply a dead evenings, with nothing worthwhile taking place. 

In the town of Sunnydale that normally wasn't the case. Most nights the town was more alive, so to speak, after the sun went down then it ever was while the golden orb of superheated plasma raced from one horizon to the other.

At 1630 Revello Drive, a house that had stood unoccupied for several weeks, ever since its previous owners decided it was in their best interest to leave town, as quickly as possible. They had taken only what they could carry with them on the spur of the moment.

Today a new family had begun the process of moving in. A large box truck had been parked out front most of the day. Several large muscular men had spent a frantic day hauling boxes out of the truck and into the two-story house.

The family was a new, modern style family: a single mother, Joyce Summers, and her two daughters, sixteen-year-old high school sophomore Buffy Anne was her eldest, while Dawn Marie was itching to reach thirteen, a birthday that was still several years away.

Until a few months ago Buffy had been the poster child for the expression world class bitch. She had ruled her old high school, Hemery with a honeyed tongue that was coated with poison. With a few well placed words she was capable of bringing a tear to the eye or sniffle to the lips of even the most callused person. With a single nod of her head she was able to exalt the lowest into the stratosphere of Hemery's socially elite or cast out those that have slighted her in some small way. At Hemery she had been queen and not a single person would dare challenge her for her throne.

Not until her life had been turned upside down and inside out.

All by a sacred duty passed from one girl to the next, a destiny she did not want. A destiny she was determined to leave in the dust. A destiny she was never going to follow. It had already taken so much from her; her father, parents' marriage, popularity, her friends.

Normalcy was gone.

Sanity wasn't that for behind.

Buffy had no intention of picking up her nightly activities. She had already paid a dear price because of them. More then she was willing to admit. If she came upon a vampire or something, she'd stake it, but she wasn't going to actively seek them out.

Besides, this was Sunnydale not Los Angeles. From everything she had seen so far LA could swallow this flea speck town and never realize a gnat had flown down its throat. How many vampires could this town, whose entire population she could count on one hand, support. Aside from the occasional bloodsucker who decided to pick up a snack on his way through town, Buffy didn't believe many of any consequence.

Nothing like the legions Lathos had commanded.

Her plan was simple. She was going to live her life. Try to pick up the pieces that have been shattered and tossed into the wind and get on the best she could in this one hitch town. She was seriously contemplating finding herself a tutor to help bring her grades up. _Maybe even make the honor roll_? She mused sarcastically. She would be happy just to maintain a straight C average.

As far as vampires went, they could unlive their unlifes any old way they wanted. So long as their path didn't cross hers.

Not too far down from Buffy's room was a slightly smaller room. Inside was the youngest of the three Summers women, Dawn, the waifish girl with long, flaxen brown hair.

The lights were off; the room was swathed in darkness. A large hump swelled the covers of what had been a neatly made bed just a short time ago.

Dawn lay under the thick quilt, flashlight shining brightly. Dawn finished reading what she had written and closed her dairy. There wasn't anything knew in what she had just wrote. It was all the same thing, verbatim. For the past three weeks it was always the same.

Dawn had tried to explain what had happened, only trying to get a word in when Buffy was on a rant was as conductive to living a long life as walking into the den of a hibernating grizzly bear and slapping the cantankerous omnivore until it woke up. Something only the mentally unstable would do. As soon as Buffy started talking Dawn knew her chance to confess everything had just slid by the wayside.

She wanted to tell Buffy, was practically dieing to tell her. Not telling had her all knotted up inside. Several times she had tried but the words never made it out of her mouth. They got stuck in her throat. Like a car stuck on ice, the wheels just kept spinning without any traction.

She sighed deeply.

Somehow she had to tell Buffy the truth about what happened; she had been the one that read her dairy. That Mom was innocent. Even after hearing her startled proclamation she hadn't delved into those off white pages to discover Buffy's deepest, darkest secrets.

Buffy might not believe that Joyce wouldn't read her diary, even if it had been left lying open on the parlor coffee table. She respected peoples' privacy far too much to invade her own daughters'. Buffy didn't believe Dawn, or so she said. She said, "Even if that was the case we'd be the ones she'd spy on."

Dawn knew that Buffy's relationship with their mother was no where near as close as her own. Their relationship had always been… strained, was the best word Dawn could think of to describe it. There had always been a gulf between the two, has been for as long as she could remember.

The two had been spending a lot more time together recently: Gynecologist appointments, Planned Parenthood clinics, pamphlets on STDs, contraceptives, and things she wasn't allowed to see. Buffy however seemed less then thrilled with the attention she was receiving.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Darkness was fading quickly as the soft, pink light of dawn crept toward the horizon. It was still more then an hour away, closer to two hours and only the earliest risers were out and about already.

Or in this case, those that have yet to make their way home.

Downtown Sunnydale was much like other small towns across America. Two strips of blacktop cut their way between stout brick and stone buildings that have stood for more then a century; squat structures, the tallest of which stood no more then seven stories.

Instead of a traffic light to control the flow of traffic at the intersection there were stops signs at each corner and an island rotary in the center of the intersection. Upon the rotary stood a picturesque Welcome To Sunnydale sign. It looked as if it had originally been painted in the nineteen fifties and been meticulously maintained ever since. Modern street lamps provided more then adequate illumination along the sidewalks.

It was an idyllic scene.

So of course it was destined to be shattered.

Headlights splashed, careening wildly for a moment of the sides of the primitive brick and mortar buildings before they zero in on the, "Welcome To Sunnydale", sign. Then like a drunkard whose suddenly gained a brief moment of clarity, they hold steady, tires screech, a black behemoth of a car – its windows completely blacked out aside from one little strip in the front windshield – slammed into the right post square in the center of a solid steel bumper.

It was a solid car, nothing fancy having been built during a time when cars were meant to last the test of time. It could quite possibly go head to head with a Sherman Tank and win.

The thick wood beam buckled and cracked as the car swerved to the right. Its right rear fender slapped the left post causing the sign to tilt away from the car.

It was a slow fall, almost as if it was struggling to hold itself upright; to no avail. As soon as it started to fall there was no going back. It landed hard with a load crash. A good portion of it was lying in the road.

The door opened with a rusted groan. The power driven rhythm of AC/DC's "Shake a Leg" poured from the car's speakers obliterating what was left of the night's tranquility. Brian Johnson's heavy voice belted out barely decipherable lyrics as his words would occasionally drawl together. "**Kicking ass in the class and they tell me you're a damn disgrace**." A heavy black boot stomped disdainfully onto the green grass. "**They tell me what they think but they stink and I really don't care**." The boot was followed by the rest of Spike. "**Got a mind of my own, move on, get out of my hair**."

Despite his average size he appeared larger then life. "**Shake a leg, shake your head**. **Shake a leg, wake the dead**." He looked around the sleepy little town with a black sneer on his lips. "**Shake a leg, get stuck in**. **Shake a leg, shake a leg**." A vicious, amber light twinkled in his eyes and was gone.

Spike hated towns like this one. "**Magazines, wet dreams, dirty women on machines for me**." Small, pedestrian towns like Andy Griffith's Mayberry. "**Big licks, skin flicks, tricky dicks are my chemistry**." Or the town that nancy boy twit, Beaver Cleaver grew up in. "**Goin' against the grain, trying to keep me sane with you**." It was simply that kind of town. "**So stop your grinnin' and drop your linen for me**."

It was the main reason he had knocked over their pretty little sign. "**Shake a leg, shake your head  
Shake a leg, wake the dead**." It needed to be done; plus it made him feel a little better… not much, but a little. "**Shake a leg, get stuck in. Shake a leg, shake a leg**." It spoke volumes about the state he was in when an act of petty vandalism could bring a smile to his lips. "**Shake it. Come on**."

With preternatural slowness Spike drew his pack of cigarettes from his duster's right hip pocket. He flipped the lid open and scowled discovering only one cigarette left in the box. If he actually paid for them, instead of nicking them when he didn't simply intimidate some pimply face attendant into giving him a few packs; free of charge, he might be more upset then he was. Considering the price a pack of cigarettes went for these days he was damn grateful he was an evil fiend.

He plucked the lone cigarette from the pack, then crushed the empty cellophane wrapped cardboard packet in his hand before tossing it to the ground. "**Idle juvenile on the street, on the street**." Retrieving his zippo from his pocket he clicked it open as he took another slow look around the town center. "**Kicking everything with his feet, with his feet**." With a quick flick, steel struck flint, the spark set the oil soak wick aflame. "**Fighting on the wrong side of the law, of the law**." A flame that set the end of his cigarette to a burning amber. "**Spitting and bitin' and kicking and fightin' for more**." He snapped the lighter close and made it disappear back into his pocket with deceptively quick hands.

"**Shake a leg, shake your head**." His right hand plucked the cigarette from his mouth and a cloud of grey smoke billowed out of his nose. "**Shake a leg, wake the dead**." "Better enjoy your last night slayer…" "**Shake a leg, get stuck in**." "…Tomorrow, you and me…" "**Shake a leg, play to win**." "…We're going to have…" "**Shake a leg, shake your head**." "…Ourselves a bit of…" "**Shake a leg, wake the dead**." "…A reckoning." "**Shake a leg, get stuck in**. **Shake a leg, shake a leg**.** Shake it**.** Oh yeah**." Brian Johnson's bellow made an odd counterpoint to Spike's soft vow.

He tossed his barely touched cigarette away and climbed into the Desoto settling quite easily behind the wheel. He twisted the key with a savageness he couldn't explain. The ancient Desoto came to life with a roar. Slipping the car into reverse the tires squealed as it surged backward. He dropped the shifter into drive and the car leaped ahead. The door swung shut.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

_How did I end up here_? The thought bubbled in Buffy's head. She stood at the lip of the crypt's entrance and took in the scene set in front of her. A pair of vampires, DeBarge reject she had spotted at the Bronze schmoozing Willow out the door and blonde haired woman wearing a catholic school girl outfit. If it wasn't for the amber eyes, heavy brow ridges, and sharp fangs she would have been an attractive young girl. _It had started off as such a good day_.

And it had started off as a really good day. Her mother had made some comment about not getting up to the same activities that had gotten her kicked out of Hemery, but she had learnt long ago how to zone her mother out so the remark had more or less been a non factor.

Then there had been that skateboarder on campus that her hotness had given a sever case of tunnel vision to. His attention had been so focused on her that he was aware of nothing else around him. Not even the railing that literally knocked him head over heels. She hadn't bothered to get a decent look at the skater, because he was a skater and unless it was Tony Hawk… There really wasn't a point.

Her day was still going along smoothly, even after the hiccup in Principle Flutie's office. She hadn't allowed that to bring her down. It didn't start to hit a decline until after she left the Principle's office and ran straight into Xander Harris. Normally she was hyper aware of everything around her, but she had completely missed the tall – not as tall as his friend Jesse who she meant later that morning – very svelte brunette. The only reason she could think of for her lapse was her concern over fitting in on campus: making friends, keeping her grades up, not being labeled a freak and becoming the school pariah.

And the first thing she did was run over a guy big enough that she should have bounced off him and fallen to the floor in a heap. She knew if she didn't go down then the rumor mill was going to start buzzing with speculation. So she acted quickly, before anyone would notice the slight hesitation, and staggered back a step and dropped what she had been carrying, her purse.

Besides he was kind of cute if he ever learnt how to coordinate his assemble. He reminded her of Alec Baldwin, when he first joined "Knots Landing" before he went all psycho; a taller, slightly less rakish, nowhere near as handsome version of Alec Baldwin. There was just something about his eyes.

Then he had to go and open his mouth, leaving the fantasy playing in her head in utter ruins. "Can I have you?" Like what girl wants those to be the first words she heard coming out of some nameless dweeb's mouth, very suave for the not pathetic guy.

Her day had picked up after that, for awhile anyway. Cordelia had been nice, helpful. The tall brunette had even reminded her of someone though Buffy hadn't been able to put her finger on who it was at the time. It was between classes when they had stopped at the water fountain, then she finally figured out who Cordelia reminded her of.

Herself.

It twisted her stomach listening to Cordelia rag on the mousy redhead with the liquid jade eyes. It was like listening to herself through some type of warp field, or something equally scientific sounding. She maintained enough composure to keep her tongue still. It would have been so easy to fall back into her-old-self. She didn't want that though, she wanted to be better then she had been. It had been a struggle, but somehow she had managed it.

Willow had left the fountain on the verge of tears and Buffy counted it a kindness. Kindness that she had won her private war and had managed to keep her mouth shut. If she had piped in, it wouldn't have been on the verge tears. Willow would have run home to sob pitifully in her mother's lap.

The words had been on the edge of her tongue.

And Willow was such a nice person. The nicest person she had ever meant; almost as nice as Dawn. Dawn though was nine and all nine year olds were nice.

Only she hadn't been that nice at nine. In fact she had always been a bitch. It was like her nice genes were dormant and she had been given a double dose of excessive bitch genes. So much so that she made Cordelia appear to be honey coated sugar when compared to her.

The fact that her being called as slayer had coincided with her wanting to change for the better hadn't been lost on her. She wasn't sure what followed what. That somebody, something was capable of altering her on such a fundamental level frightened her. It was like she was no longer in control of who she was.

After that her day had proceeded on a steady downward spiral.

It had all started in the library Cordelia had dropped her off at. For containing nothing more then stuffy, dust covered books it turned out to be a real hoot. Starting with her new watcher, who had popped up from nowhere, all so he could remind her of the destiny she had to fulfill. A sacred duty to uphold. Needless to say she had gotten out of there, and away from Rupert Giles, with all possible haste.

Her second meeting with Willow was a much more pleasant encounter. It quickly turned into a social gathering as Xander, who returned her stake, and Jesse deciding to drop by for a visit. Cordelia had put in a special cameo appearance, just to fire off a few caustic comments and to inform everyone of the dead boy found in the girls' locker room.

It was like a bad dream.

Or worse, her life.

A quick investigation of the body revealed the person had been drained by a vampire. It was so what she didn't need on her first day of school. An argument with her watcher in which she emphatically told him she didn't care quickly followed.

After another brief encounter with her mother, one in which the older woman wanted to know where she was going and when she planned on being back, it was off to the Bronze. It was the only club in Sunnydale worth going to. It was also the only club in Sunnydale.

There had been that strange encounter with the vampire in the alley. He was different from the others of his kind, different even then Spike, enough so she didn't stake him out of hand. Plus there had been the bribe; a necklace, a simple silver cross.

The vampire had said she was standing at the mouth of hell; that she had to be ready for something called the harvest, whatever that meant. It sounded like something that needed to be tended to at the end of autumn, not the middle of winter. She was beginning to get the idea that there was a sinister layer hidden just beneath Sunnydale's sugary surface, and not that far underneath either.

If her instincts about this town were right then she was going to need allies and a vampire that wanted to kill his own kind might come in handy. Plus there was that something different about him, in his eyes. Maybe remorse or regret, but it seemed deeper then that. More like damnation.

After that surreal encounter she had hoped to dance away her troubles, but low and behold her own personal stalker… Watcher had made an appearance at the nightclub. Seeing his tweed covered hide, so flustered and out of place amongst all the teenagers almost made it worth it. She had practically thrown Willow into the arms of the second vampire she had come across in this town. Then while she had been searching for Willow she had almost turned Cordelia into a shish kebab; so much for her walk small and keep a low profile approach to school. If her reputation wasn't psycho by now, it would be come morning. Cordelia was a virtuoso when it came to that phone of hers.

Coming out of the Bronze she had spotted Xander and decided she needed one of the natives to act as her guide to all things Sunnydale. Xander had other ideas though. At first it was a joke to him, then his attitude changed. She could see it in his eyes, a malicious glint. It was like a mouse that had discovered the wonders of steroids and thought he was a match for the cat that continually toyed with him. His words didn't bother her, but his tone spoke volumes about him.

It told her quite a lot about the seventeen year old. That he thought she was crazy, a bigger freak then he was, even lower on the high school totem pole; which made her fodder, fair game, an easy mark. That in this one moment he was going to get his revenge on all the popular girls who had ever used him as a doormat since preschool. The fact that he didn't know her from spit on the sidewalk didn't seem to faze him in the slightest.

At least she hoped that was the extent of his plan. She couldn't see Willow being friends with a rapist or somebody that would contemplate the idea. Not that Xander would have gotten that far if he had tried to exhort sex from her in order to keep his mouth shut about what he knew.

Back in Hemery, at the beginning of the school year it had happened to Tiffany St. Claire. Xavier McCad, a senior, had discovered her secret, her shame, the fact that her father was an unemployed bum who lived on the streets of LA, staying in the homeless shelters whenever he could. He had confronted her and insinuated he would keep her secret in return for certain favors, if not then he really couldn't be held responsible for whose hands the information fell into. Tiffany never had much of a choice; if she didn't give into his demands then her life was as good as over. She would have had a better chance surviving a head-on-collision with a speeding bus as she would have surviving Hemery if McCad released his information.

Two months later Xavier told a couple of his friends, guaranteeing them the same service he was receiving. Just not at the same time.

In the end Tiffany survived neither the speeding bus nor Hemery.

She however certainly wasn't Tiffany St. Claire, mousy little princess and Xander sure as hell wasn't Xavier McCad, a rich untouchable jock. He'd have a fun time living the rest of his life without kneecaps; not that he'd be living that life in Sunnydale. Not after the rumors she started. Neither him, his father, or his mother would be able to show their faces in town once it got around as to just how close of a family they were.

Because he was Willow's friend Buffy was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and hold off on destroying him and his family.

The day's events passed through her mind as she took in the scene around her. Xander darted inside the crypt rushing to Willow and Jesse's side. "Well this is nice," she said running a critical eye over the crypt, "it's a little bare, but a dash of paint. A few throw pillows… Call it home." All the while she talked she moved into the crypt, edging her way to the other side of the sarcophagus, making sure to keep the vampires' focus on her.

Darla watched the tiny blonde anxiously. There was something about the girl that unnerved the old vampire. While there was a trace of fear on her scent it was controlled. Excitement and anticipation rolled off her. Her heartbeat was slow and steady and she seemed completely at ease. "Who the hell are you?"

Shock painted Buffy's face, and it wasn't all that feigned either. This seemed to be the first person she's encountered so far that didn't know who she was. For a time she had thought there was a mystically stenciled Slayer tattooed across her forehead. "You mean there's actually someone that doesn't know already? Whew, that's a relief. I'm telling you, having a secret identity in this town is a lot of work."

"Buffy we bail now right? Right?" Xander asked supporting both Jesse and Willow. This was becoming a little too real. It was as if Buffy had somehow sucked him into her delusion. He was positive the last time he checked vampires didn't exist.

"Not yet!" Thomas growled out of the corner of his mouth.

Buffy turned slightly bringing Thomas' attention back to her. Heavy sarcasm coated her voice as she said, "Okay, first of all. What's with the outfit? Live in the now. Okay? You look like DeBarge." Turning completely she focused on Darla. "Now, we can do this the hard way, or… Well actually there's just the hard way."

"That's fine with me," Darla answered with a hiss.

"Are you sure?" Buffy's voice was thick with false concern. "Now this is not gonna be pretty. We're talking violence, strong language, adult content…"

From behind Buffy Thomas growled softly and charged. Buffy slipped the make shift stake from the sleeve of her coat and planted it in Thomas' chest. To the three teenagers' surprise he fell back turning to dust.

As if nothing untoward happened she asked, "See what happens when you roughhouse?"

"He was young and stupid," Darla replied with an evil sneer. She was worried. She was more worried then she had been in a long time. That this girl could dispatch one of the Master's line so easily was troubling.

"Xander go!" Buffy ordered.

"Don't go far," Darla suggested sounding almost playful.

The trio rushed toward the exit in a slow, shambling, trot. All of their attention was focused on Buffy and Darla. None of them saw the figure that loomed in the entrance blocking their escape. Xander bounced off the solid body and the three fell back into the crypt.

"Stick around ducklings," Spike said as his lighter clicked open. "Things are just about to get interesting."

"Spike!" Fear and excitement and revulsion tinged Darla's voice in almost equal quantities as she took in her great grandchilde. He had changed a lot in the ninety years since she had last seen him, yet he was remarkably unchanged as well. He still possessed a flare for the dramatic; knowing just when to strike a grandiose pose. Something he did far too often as far as she was concerned. If possible he was even more full of himself then the last time she had seen him.

"Spike." Buffy's eyes lit up at the sound of the vampire's voice. His presence filled the crypt and she felt a warm tingle burn deep in her bones.

He put flame to his cigarette and inhaled. Making his lighter disappear he plucked the cigarette from his mouth. "If you're lucky, you just might learn a thing or two."

A predatory smile crinkled Darla's eyes. She could admit the girl just might be a challenge to her, enough of one to put the outcome of their fight in doubt. Against Spike there was no doubt. Twenty years as a vampire and he accomplished something that everyone said was suicide… Less then eighty years later he did it again.

Killed a slayer in single combat. Just him and her.

He was constantly on the search for the next slayer. Normally it took years to find out where one was, if they lived that long. Most often they didn't.

Spike sauntered down the stairs forcing Xander and the others to scramble out of his way. His electric blue, hawk like eyes flickered to Darla as he took a casual drag off his cigarette. "Well, well, well…" Smoke billowed from his mouth as he spoke. "If it isn't my very own grand ma-ma?" His gaze settled on Buffy. "Looks like you've got yourself in a bit of pickle pet."

"Nothing I can't handle," Buffy said irritably as she remembered it had been more then three weeks since their last night together, their one and only night together. Three weeks and not one hint that he ever wanted to see her again. It didn't matter that she had been the one who snuck out of his apartment in the early morning after they had spent all night long making love; a wild night of uninhibited sex that had trashed his apartment.

He was still responsible for checking up on her, making sure she was okay, asking her out on another date. He had done none of those things.

The more she thought about the more she seethed.

"Wasn't talking about you Luv," Spike answered as he reached the floor of the crypt. He took another deliberate drag from his cigarette.

_He called me Love_ and a somewhat more important, _he thinks I can handle this on my own_, bounce around Buffy's mind almost at the same time.

"That was so cool," Jesse whispered loudly while pressing a cloth to his neck. "Like something out of a movie."

Xander looked at his best friend and said, "We're in so much trouble."

"Is he…" Willow pointed at Spike then towards Darla. "…One of them?"

Buffy beamed for a brief, nearly non-existent moment before her scowl returned. _No way is he getting off the hook that easily_… _A couple of flowery words don't mean all that much for somebody full of flowery words_.

Xander nodded as he said, "I think…"

"The lunchables should really learn when to keep their lips from flapping 'fore a certain someone, namely me, takes an interest in removing them."

Spike hadn't even looked at them, yet all could sense the sincerity in his words. Still Xander couldn't help but finish his answer as he eked out a, "So," in a little girl's high pitched voice.

Darla had the distinct impression she was missing something. There was a by play going on between Spike and the blonde that she could pick up on, but didn't understand.

"Don't suppose the big pile of dust there," his chin jutted out towards the pile of dust on the floor, "was your replacement for that nancy boy poofter you always use to keep tethered to your hip? If so…" He gave his head a sad shake. "Whatever became of dear old Angelus anyway? He finally meet the pointy end of a stake? Or you got him stashed away somewhere hereabouts, trot him out every now and again. Some sideshow carnival freak… Get a good chuckle?"

Buffy suspected Darla's face would have been scarlet if she had been alive. As it was her breathes were coming in labored gasps. A sight to see for a vampire. If possible her brows continued to grow tighter together with each word.

"I should have had you killed the second Drusilla made you, you insolent dog." Darla heard the note of fear lacing her own voice along with the anger and hated herself for it. She despised him because he could make her feel fear.

Spike smile at her; it was a warm, nearly companionable grin that froze Darla to her marrow, which was always close to room temperature anyway. "Ought to introduce you two. After all, it's only proper for a person to know their killer. Buffy, this here washed up piece of old leather is Darla. Sire of my sire's sire. Darla meet the Slayer."

The little color left in Darla's face drained away in an instant. Silently she mouthed the word, "Slayer."


End file.
